Sotto Voce
by Oblivious Obscenity
Summary: Azalya's had enough of the Vongola and their crises; the Cavallone have their own. Dissentient factions are pushing every family boundary. Her loyalty was always with Dino. But the Mafia gets complicated fast, especially when love and power are involved.
1. Big Brother is Watching You

Yaaay~ First story. I've never written any fanfiction that anyone has read before... so here goes nothing~ :)  
Also, I'm not really a fan of the KHR fandom, but I guess I joined it! Oh, well. Maybe you can tell from the intro (255 characters... that was so hard! Lesson in being concise, I guess XD) that this really has more to do with Dino and the Cavallone family than the Vongola. *rant rant*  
Of course, KHR (c) Amano Akira and... story is not really copyrighted, but it's mine :) (evidence = it sucks XD)  
Neeways~ enjoy and please forgive the typos! *Teh Queen of Typos _AKA_ Teh Queen of Not Proofreading*

* * *

**Chapter 1: Big Brother Is Watching You**

Azalya suppressed a shudder of distaste as the Elvis Presley wannabe glowered down at her. His squinty eyes were narrowed to menacing slits, his greasy hair less than a centimeter from her nose. She could smell his cheap hair gel.

"Cavallone," he rumbled, sounding more like a grown man than a junior high school senior. "You missed third period science this morning, didn't you?" He cracked his knuckles threateningly.

Azalya backed as far away from him as she could, more out of disgust than anything else, and felt her back thump against the cold plaster wall. She pressed her schoolbooks to her chest. "Yeah. So what?"

"You didn't have a legal excuse, did you?"

"No." She felt the first niggles of panic and swallowed. She tasted lead and ashes and knew she had to have cigarette breath. "So what?"

"You are aware that skipping class is in violation of the school rules, aren't you?"

She was tempted to provoke the prefect with yet another "So what?", but no one would be pleased if she started trouble at school. Skipping and attracting the Disciplinary Committee's attention was already in violation of her low-profile rule. "Um..." Azalya mumbled instead, glancing around the corridor for help.

Her Humanities teacher, the one with the complicated name she could never remember, walked by without a sideways glance. Three of her classmates met her searching eyes with nervous smiles and waves before continuing on their way. Other students, on their way home or to after school activities, filtered past and barely acknowledged the scene before them. They all acted as though the public interrogation of a relatively innocent student was entirely normal. Which, at Namimori Junior High School, it was.

The Disciplinary Committee member leaned over her. He raised a hand as if to strike her, but only wagged his fat finger in her face. Hibari Kyouya's prefects weren't averse to beatings—although violence, too, was against the school rules—but Azalya had managed to avoid most physical confrontations simply by being a girl. "Go to class when you're supposed to," he said, turning and walking away. "Or else." He didn't have to complete the sentence. They both knew it wasn't an empty threat.

_Hibari is watching you..._ She chuckled and shook her head. It sounded so foreboding that it was almost silly. _Big brother is watching you, more like._

"Asa-chan!"

She turned at the too-loud voice and saw her best friend, Seiko, rushing down the hall. The other girl had a huge smile on her face, one that was much too bright for a school day, to contrast Azalya's deadpan expression. Her dark black hair was short, as was her stature. When she stopped in front of Azalya, Seiko's head reached her shoulder. "Where were you third period?" she asked with a concerned frown.

_Where were you when Breadhead was terrorizing me?_ Azalya thought at her friend, but she only shrugged callously and started walking down that hall toward the lockers. "Ditched. I needed to catch a smoke."

"Smoking!" Seiko declared in a melodramatically scandalized voice. Several people turned to stare, and Azalya motioned for her to keep quiet. "I thought you quit," she continued reprovingly at a more reasonably volume.

"Yeah, well. You know what they say about bad habits."

Seiko shook her head. "I know smoking causes cancer."

"Que sera, sera."

The black-haired girl squinted at Azalya's large blue eyes. "Was it cigarettes or are you high, too?"

"Stop staring at my pupils. I'm not high," she said, annoyed and quickening her pace.

"Azalya-san," Seiko sang, (mis)pronouncing the name like _ah-sah-ri-a_. "Wait for me." Seiko caught up to Azalya, her shorter stride making her look like a silly little puppy. "If you need help... there's a phone number you can call."

"I'm not addicted," Azalya replied automatically.

Seiko gave her a dubious look, but she didn't press the matter. "So... What did Kusakabe-senpai say?"

"Who?" she asked blankly.

"Kusakabe-senpai. The one talking to you."

"Oh, Breadhead?" Azalya laughed. "Don't ditch, don't make trouble—same old, same old. As if Kyouya cares."

"_Hibari-senpai_," Seiko corrected, glancing around quickly to make sure no one had heard Azalya call him by his given name. "That's rude, you know."

Azalya half-listened to her friend's lecture on respect as they changed shoes and walked out of the school. As soon as they were outside, Azalya slipped a cigarette into her mouth and lit it.

"You're still on school grounds, Cavallone!" Mawabi Kugayara, their homeroom and Literature teacher, called from the school.

Azalya hopped off the curb and waved jauntily. "Not anymore," she said, taking a long drag and blowing smoke in the school's direction. "See you tomorrow, Sensei." Before she could turn back to the street, someone plucked the cigarette from her lips. She whirled angrily, sure it was Seiko, and froze.

"Hey, Cuz," the blond apparition said with a grin, putting her cigarette in his mouth and puffing contentedly. "Don't you know there's a smoking age?"

"_Dino_!" Azalya said in disbelief, failing to keep from squealing in excitement. "What are you _doing_ here?" She stared at her older cousin, who looked for all the world like a walking advertisement for how cool smoking could look.

He was dressed simply in a collarless black shirt and cargo pants, but the casual clothing accentuated his good looks rather than detracting from them. He'd rolled up the left sleeve to show off his intricately designed tattoo. "Checking up on you, Cuz. Didja miss me?"

"No," Azalya lied. "More importantly, where are your guar—" She broke off and glanced sideways at her friend. "Where are the others?"

Dino waved his right hand dismissively. "At the hotel. I'm a big boy; I don't need babysitters." He winked and directed his attention to Seiko. "And speaking of babysitters, are you Aza's?"

Seiko giggled. "No, silly. I'm her friend. Iwao Seiko."

Dino smiled, all charm. "Excuse us, would you? We have some family business to deal with."

"Sure." Azalya watched her friend struggle and fail to find something more interesting to say. "Well," she said finally to Azalya, "see you tomorrow, Asa-chan."

Dino dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his foot, clad in glossy black leather boots. He rested his arm on her shoulder as they started walking down the street. "My little armrest," Dino teased, patting her on the head. "How are you today?"

"Annoyed. You?"

He laughed and shifted so his arm was draped around her shoulders. It was almost an embracing gesture. "Glad to know I still have that effect on you."

She made a face at him. "Not you. It's that Kyouya and his Breadhead gang. It's like the frickin' Gestapo." Thinking about them made her blood pressure rise. She lit another cigarette, ignoring Dino's disapproving frown.

"You'll get suspended. You can't do whatever you like here."

She grinned past the smoke encircling her face. "Are you telling me not to smoke?"

He stopped walking and crossed his arms over his chest, looking down on her. If it were anyone other than Dino, she might have been intimidated. "I told you to quit."

She fidgeted under his serious blue eyes and twirled a lock of wavy brown hair around her finger. "You smoke, too," she pointed out sulkily. _I only started because of you. I thought you looked_ sooooo _cool_. She looked away, sure he would read the accusation in her eyes.

After a moment of silence, Dino grinned. "All right. I'll quit, too. Let's call it a family bonding experience."

"Fine," Azalya said grudgingly. She flicked the still-burning cigarette into road and threw the half-empty box after it. "That cost me two thousand yen," she said, watching a tire roll over the package.

"I'll make it up to you, Aza," Dino promised, giving her a little shove toward the hotel building. "Come on."

The spotless glass doors slid open automatically without so much as a hiss when they walked in. The hotel receptionist didn't look up from her desk. She was focused on the computer and tapping the keys with the speed, fervor, and singular concentration of someone that had to be playing Tetris instead of working.

They waited about a second to be acknowledged, and then Dino tapped the call bell. The receptionist must have resented the interruption, for she looked up with a scowl. When she saw them standing there, she fixed her face into a smile that was almost sincere. "Can I help you?"

"We'll need some refreshments in room 513."

The receptionist nodded and jotted it down on a sticky note. "All right, just a minute." She turned back to her computer, and Azayla saw the QQ homepage flash up.

"I'm allergic to tree nuts," Azalya said when she saw the receptionist wasn't going to ask.

"All right." She sounded annoyed. "We'll see what else we have."

They exchanged a look while going up the stairs; the elevator was out of order. "They have great service here," Azalya said blandly. "We should bring the whole family here next summer. Hey, I've got a great idea: We can introduce Chiara to Kyouya. If we're lucky, they'll finish each other off."

He laughed as he unlocked and opened the door to his room. It was a nice room, as far as hotel rooms went, neat and spacious. The air had the faintly acrid scent of oranges, like Febreeze but better.

"Sit down," Dino offered as he dropped into the office chair and propped his boots up on the coffee table.

Azalya ignored this and made her way around the room slowly, checking every nook and cranny thoroughly.

"You don't need to do that. Come sit with me."

She made a face at him. "You're way too relaxed for a boss."

Dino gave her a smile that was a part child-like innocence and part Mafia cunning but didn't answer.

"Okay," Azalya said. "Let's talk business. First off, where are your guards? You're lucky you didn't get run over on your way to school."

Dino winced. "I'm not _that_ clumsy," he objected.

"Are," she countered. "I've seen you trip over dust. Anyways—"

"You want to know why I'm in Japan. Right?"

"Trouble's brewing," Azalya guessed. "It's Chiara, isn't it?"

Picking at the fraying leather armrest, he pouted at her. "There you go, again. You're always stealing my thunder. How'd you guess?"

"Ahh, that'd be my superior female intuition," she said with a wink that was much too lighthearted for the occasion. She sobered quickly. "Anything I need to deal with?"

"Maybe." He poked a finger through the leather and pulled out a piece of fluff. "Vongola IX has had a change of heart regarding his successor. He's drafted an official statement declaring Xanxus as his heir. The Outside Advisor still wants Tsuna to inherit the family, though. Better change that 'maybe' to 'almost certainly.'"

Azalya shuddered. She'd never met Xanxus—never wanted to—but she'd heard stories aplenty and seen the scars to prove them. She knew enough about him to know that, if he wanted to be boss, he'd slice No Good Tsuna into sashimi without breaking a sweat. "Well, Sawada Tsunayoshi's dead meat," she said resignedly.

"Don't say it like that. Tsuna can do it." _I hope_, his eyes added.

_Yeah, sure. Tsuna has as much chance of beating Xanxus as canned tuna. And that's no chance at all unless he's allergic._ Instead of saying what she thought, Azalya asked, "Which do we support?"

Dino sighed; he looked incredibly exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was too pale. Azalya marveled that she hadn't noticed it earlier, how tired Dino had to be. Some cousin she was. "We can't take a side," Dino was saying, "not until there's a clear winner; it's not our family..." he trailed off, looking weary and annoyed.

Azalya sighed, too. "Why am I sensing a 'but' in there somewhere?"

"But Chiara came out today in support of Xanxus," he completed.

Azalya swore. "If they team up, we'll be in serious trouble. I don't know why you came to Japan, but you can't be all buddy-buddy with Tsuna. It'll be the perfect opportunity for Chiara to question your judgment. Who wants a boss like No Good Tsuna for the Vongola?"

"Azalya!"

"It's true!" she protested. "You should have seen him yesterday in Chemistry—he spilled HCl all over the floor. And then he slipped in it. He almost burned out Seiko's eyes. I know you like him, but he's not any more fit to be a boss than a baby. And if Reborn—"

There was a loud crack like a canon blast, and the door was flung open. Azalya and Dino leapt to their feet. As she instinctively stepped in front of him, she saw him pull out his whip from the corner of her eye. They both relaxed when they saw the petite figure standing in the doorway: She was little over a foot tall, dressed in a maid's uniform, carrying a large platter and looking about as menacing as a cupcake.

"Ciaossu."

Azalya gaped at the little girl. There was only one person she knew that used that greeting. But the last she'd checked, he'd been a baby hitman not a maid, and he definitely hadn't been female. "Room service?" she asked Dino, puzzled. "Do they employ little kids, too?"

Dino was hurriedly tucking the black leather whip out of sight. "Great timing. I'm famished."

Azalya sighed, wondering how, in the middle of a family crisis, Dino could think about his stomach. "It doesn't have nuts, does it?" she asked the maid cautiously.

"None at all."

Looking at the tray of steaming cookies—they looked like oatmeal chocolate chip, her favorite—Azalya found she was, despite everything, starving. She took one hungrily, trying not to cram the whole thing into her mouth after the first bite. It was delicious. "Mmm," she mumbled appreciatively.

"Good?" Dino asked, reaching for a cookie.

The little girl dropped the tray, spilling cookies and crumbs all over the floor. She hadn't moved or tripped at all that Azalya could see, but had simply let the tray fall out of her hands. "Whoops."

Laughing sympathetically, she knelt down to help clean up, but lost her balance and nearly fell. Dino caught her by the arm. "Are you okay?" he demanded.

She tried to say, "I'm fine. Just dizzy," but her voice came out garbled and unclear, even to her. Her throat felt parched. She tried to swallow and found she couldn't. She saw Dino stand and approach the maid-that-wasn't, saw his mouth moving, but she couldn't hear anything. Her vision was skewed, too, like she was looking through a kaleidoscope or a shattered mirror. Brilliant fireworks went off behind her eyeballs, and then everything went black.

* * *

Azalya opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back on the worn hotel carpet. Dino knelt over her, looking half-worried and half-annoyed. She couldn't see anyone around him, but that didn't mean danger wasn't present. "That girl," she croaked, trying to warn him. "Look out."

Dino shook his head. "No, that was—"

"Me."

And there was Reborn, stepping around Dino, holding a gun half his size like it was nothing.

"Yikes," she said, but without much energy because she was incredibly tired. "Reborn...san. Hello, Reborn-san." Azalya sat up. Her vision spun.

"Bianchi's cooking skills are regressing," Reborn commented idly, inclining his head toward the cookies strewn on the carpet. The chameleon sitting on his hat wobbled dangerously. "This batch was weaker than the last."

_Lucky for me it was, or I'd be dead._ The thought didn't really upset Azalya. She'd been around long enough to know when assassinations attempts were premeditated and when they were accidents. Sure, the notion that Reborn could kill someone by mistake was laughable, but it was better than believing someone—the Vongola boss being the most likely choice—wanted to bump her off.

Azalya knew about Bianchi, too, and she was pretty sure one taste of her food would have her either dead as a doorknob or puking her guts out on the floor. And now that she thought about it... She bolted for the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before she threw up.

She'd never before been so grateful for the little bottles of mouthwash in hotel bathrooms.

"So, Reborn-san," she rasped as she emerged from the bathroom, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. She noticed that Dino was gone. "What can I do for you?"

"You can stop insulting my student." Reborn lifted his gun and pointed it at her.

Azalya thought he looked absurd, a trigger-happy little baby. She didn't comment but couldn't help raising an eyebrow dubiously.

"As his tutor," Reborn was saying, "that right lies with me." He cocked the gun and fired.


	2. Ragione d'Essere

**Chapter 2: Ragione d'Essere**

Azalya opened her eyes. Someone was bending over her, but it was too dark for her to make out the face. "Wow," she said aloud, "I just got a serious feeling of déjà vu, Dino."

"'Dino'?" the shadowy figure said. "You know him?"

Everything came back at once—Dino so exhausted, Xanxus, Chiara, Maid!Reborn, the poisoned cookies, Reborn shooting her... She couldn't remember anything after that, but she was absolutely certain she had been shot. And if that was the case, she should have been in serious pain. There was only one explanation for her complete lack of pain. (She was, in fact, feeling more peaceful and relaxed than she'd been since arriving in Japan.)

"I'm dead," she sighed. "Are you an angel?"

The figure made a choking sound, incredulously said, "An _angel_?" and turned on the lights just as she recognized his voice.

There, standing by the light switch, was the brown-eyed, spiky-haired reason she was in Japan, the reason Dino was so stressed recently: No Good Tsuna.

The nice zen feeling disappeared at once, replaced by annoyance. "Why're you in my room?" she demanded, struggling out from under the heavy blanket.

"Wait," Tsuna yelped, backing away. "Don't get up! You're not—" He turned beet red and covered his eyes.

Azalya gasped. She had just realized, to her utmost horror, that her clothes had vanished. She was dressed only in her blue-and-white polka dotted underwear and matching bra. She grabbed the blanket she had discarded and wrapped it tightly around her, glowering at Tsuna.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! You came in so suddenly, and I wasn't expecting it, and Reborn told me not to wake you, and I didn't see anything at all, and I have some clothes you can wear right here," he cried, covering his head as though expecting her to hit him.

Azalya had to smile. He expected her to beat him up? Wearing only her underwear? Wrapped up in a blanket that smelled like old men's cologne? "Sorry," she said as she pulled on a rather wrinkled white t-shirt and a baggy pair of jeans. "Could you tell me what's going on?"

Tsuna turned around, still red-faced, and Azalya suddenly noticed the black eye and multiple bruises on his face.

"Why're you all beaten up?" she asked him with a hint of concern.

"Er... Don't you remember?"

"Noooo," she said slowly, wrinkling her forehead.

"Well, ah, about half an hour ago... you came in through the window"—Tsuna gestured at the window overlooking the street, which was shattered and broken—"and, ah..."

"—beat Tsuna here to a pulp," Reborn finished, popping out from under the bed on a yellow square scooter, the kind car mechanics used. "Shouting 'I will kill you with my dying will!'" he added, mimicking a high-pitched, angry voice—her voice. "Of course, then you went and passed out after I hit you with Reverse 1 Ton."

"Oh!" Azalya declared, since everything suddenly made a lot more sense. She still didn't remember what had happened, but that wasn't odd. Dino had mentioned once that Reverse 1 Ton made the time spent in Dying Will mode seem like a dream, and Azalya could never recall her dreams. "That was a Dying Will Bullet you shot me with, then?"

"That's right."

_To think all the things I could have done with a dying will, and it was beating up Tsuna. I could have gone to Baskin Robbins, or Le Chateau Gâteau, or that little sushi place down the street._ She smiled at Tsuna. "I'm so sorry about the bruises, Tsunayoshi-kun. I don't remember hitting you at all." _But I'm sure it was gratifying._

"Oh, that's okay," Tsuna said with an easy, forgiving laugh. "That sort of thing happens all the time. And you can call me Tsuna."

_'Happens all the time'...? I knew he was being picked on, but are they hitting him, too? Why doesn't he hit them back?_ "You're such an easygoing guy for a Mafia boss-to-be," she muttered under her breath.

Tsuna froze. "Did you say 'Mafia'?" he squeaked. "Y-You know? How? Who told you? I bet it was Gokudera-kun! Oh, God! Reborn," he wailed, throwing himself down on all fours next to the baby hitman, "what am I going to do if it gets around the school that I'm training to be a Mafia boss?"

Tempted as she was to pretend it was her first time hearing such a thing, Azalya cleared her throat and explained, "I always knew, Tsuna. I'm Azalya Cavallone. Yes, of the Cavallone Mafia family. I'm surprised you never noticed." As an added insult, she threw in, "Don't you know the names of your own classmates?"

"Cavallone! Dino-san's family? Oh, that's right," he said eagerly, "you thought I was Dino-san when you first wake up. And that's how you know about the Dying Will Bullet, too," he added as though he thought he was a brilliant detective. "You're part of the Cavallone family."

"That's right, Tsuna," a voice behind then said, and they all turned in time to see Dino climb in through the window. "This is my littlest cousin," Dino said, resting his forearm on her shoulder. "AKA my armrest."

Tsuna laughed weakly. "Er, Dino-san—"

"I heard Aza was making some trouble for you," he said, anticipating Tsuna's question and looking sympathetically at his injuries. "So I came to pick her up. Say you're sorry, Aza."

"I already did," she said, annoyed.

"Well, say it again."

Azalya sighed, but mumbled a second apology. She resolved to put something cold and slimy in Dino's bed soon for treating her like a little kid. She was fourteen, for goodness' sake. She was practically an adult.

"Ne, Dino-san," Tsuna was saying, "why are you—" he broke off and cocked his head curiously.

There was a series of loud thuds like someone was running very fast up the stairs, and then the door flew open. A silver-haired blur burst in, panting, and grabbed Tsuna by the shoulders. "Tenth!" the silver-eyed young man exclaimed. "I heard something terrible happened to you. Are you all right?"

Tsuna looked like a frozen fishstick as he was shaken back and forth. "G-Gokudera-kun? What're you doing here?"

"I wouldn't be fit as the Tenth's right-hand man if I let a criminal escape after what he did to you," the newcomer declared ardently.

Azalya snorted.

"Who are you?" he demanded, stalking toward her with narrowed purple-silver eyes.

"Does _no one_ at Namimori recognize their own classmates?" she complained.

"What're you doing in the Tenth's room? Are you the one who did this?" He pointed at Tsuna's face.

"Yep."

"I see." He reached behind him and produced three sticks of dynamite from somewhere.

Dino's pale brown eyes widened. "Wait a sec, Hayato—" he started.

One moment Azalya was staring at the little instant cancer-in-a-stick, and the next Dino had shoved her to the ground. "Get down," he yelled at Tsuna, who promptly obeyed. Dino, moving with grace an Olympic gymnast would envy, dived under the bomb's trajectory and twisted as he snapped his whip. He landed on his side and rolled to his feet fluidly.

The three bombs soared out the window and exploded in the air.

They all—except Reborn, who was staring at the ceiling glassy-eyed, and Gokudera, who was already preparing his next batch of bombs—watched the miniature firework display with mouths hanging half open.

"G-Gokudera-kun," Tsuna stammered, still looking out into the darkness after the brilliant flashes had faded. "Please don't blow things up in my house."

He protested, "But the one who hurt you—"

At that moment, Tsuna's bedroom door was flung open. "Tsuna!" a woman in wearing a nightdress exclaimed. "I heard a really loud noise!"

"Kaa-san!" Tsuna yelped.

"What're you doing playing with firewor—Oh, you have friends over," she sang happily. "Will they be staying long?"

"No—" Tsuna started.

"Then I'll just go make some tea," his mother offered as she closed the door.

"—they won't be staying long," he finished, muttering under his breath. "Geez, Kaa-san, you're always doing unnecessary things."

Gokudera was still looking mutinous as he stared at the stick of dynamite in his hand, evidently unable to decide whether or not to continue attacking.

"If Tsuna were in any real danger," Azalya pointed out, blinking rapidly to clear the sunspots, "I'm sure Reborn wouldn't be sleeping."

"Hmm," said Gokudera doubtfully, obviously unimpressed with her logic.

"Anything I did to Tsuna," Azalya said, holding up her hands in the universal gesture for peace, "I did by accident. I'd appreciate it if you understood that." She started to walk away, but Gokudera planted himself firmly in her path.

"That's all very well, but who are you?"

Azalya looked up at him in annoyance. "Is it a Japanese custom to not know the names of your classmates? I'm Azalya Cavallone. Yes," she added, reading the question in his narrowed eyes, "the Mafia family." She couldn't help but add, "Attack me again and you'll be in trouble with your own family."

He looked pissed off as he tucked the dynamite into his pants. "Whatever... My bad."

Azalya changed her mind about shaking his hand. "As long as you get it," she shrugged. "I'll get going, then. Ciao."

"Wait," Tsuna called as she was about to jump out the window, and even he looked surprised at himself. "My, er, my mom's making tea. If you, you know, want to have some. Maybe."

Dino said eagerly, "I'm up for te—" but Azalya interrupted.

"We have to get back," she said tersely, throwing Dino a significant look and hoping he would remember what she'd said earlier about associating with Tsuna. "Sorry, but thanks for the offer."

"We've got time," Dino said dismissively. Either he couldn't take a hint or he didn't think much of her judgment, because he only completed his earlier statement: "I'm up for tea."

Azalya waved her hand at Gokudera and Tsuna. "Can you give us a moment?" she asked, trying to sound polite but only managing to sound like an angry flight attendant. She glanced at them, and was pretty sure her blue eyes were brimming with danger by the way the two young men flinched.

Gokudera and Tsuna edged out of room.

"What are you doing, Aza?" Dino asked. His voice was, as usual, light. As usual, it was devoid of anger. And, as was happening more and more recently, it infuriated her.

"I told you," she ground out, "not to be buddy-buddy with Tsuna! You have to think about how this looks, Dino. Tsuna is—" She broke off when she remembered what had happened last time she had insulted Tsuna. Not that she was averse to beating him up again, but there was a time and a place. "I mean, look at him! I break in here, and he's offering us tea. He's just like you used to be."

"And I turned out all right, didn't I?" he laughed.

The ferocious look on her face softened. "Yeah," she murmured, "you did, but only because you honestly care for the Cavallone. Tsuna doesn't even want Hayato around him. Listen, Dino. I love you, really, and I respect your judgment. If you want Tsuna to be Vongola's boss, then I will support you."

"Well, good—" Dino started to say.

"But please understand that I'll be one of the only ones," Azalya went on. "I'm not telling you to shun Tsuna forever—just until this whole inheritance affair blows over. No contact. Let me deal with Tsuna. All right?" Azalya didn't like to beg, but there was a real hint of pleading in her voice. The Cavallone's future was worth more than her personal pride. And if Dino wasn't in that future, the Cavallone family wouldn't stand a chance in the ever more competitive Mafia circles.

"All right," Dino agreed grudgingly. "You have a point."

Azalya let out a relieved sigh, glad he had proven his usual reasonable self. It was another good thing about Dino. Chiara was a nightmare when it came to negotiating. _My way or no way_, she liked to say. Unoriginal as well as bitchy.

Azalya lifted her hand, pinky finger extended. "Pinky swear," she said seriously. If she felt a little guilty or silly, she pretended not to.

Dino laughed, but locked pinkies with her. "You're the only one who still does that," he told her.

"Good," Azalya said with small grin. "I prefer being unique."

"Hmm, I meant, you're the only one _your age_ that still does that."

"Huh. Thanks."

Dino ruffled her light brown hair affectionately. "Don't mention it."

It was a touching cousin-cousin moment until Gokudera interrupted by kicking the door open in a typical mobster fashion. "The tea's ready," he grumbled, still sulking about being unable to blow Azalya up.

"Unfortunately, it seems we can't be staying," Dino sighed. He smiled at Tsuna. "Sorry, Tsuna. I'll be seeing you"—he glanced at Azalya, who shrugged—"someday. Stay outta trouble."

"Y-Yeah. You, too, Dino-san."

"See you tomorrow." Azalya nodded at them, walked over to the window, and looked out. It wasn't a long drop; there was a fence they could jump to.

"When Reborn wakes up," Dino added, handing Tsuna a sealed envelope, "give him this. And tell him to contact Aza if anything goes wrong."

"Er," said Tsuna.

They left on that eloquent note. It was a farewell speech Azalya would remember for the rest of her life and hold close to her heart, it was. Er. _Er_. Tsuna, she decided as she walked Dino back to the hotel, would never make a good Mafia boss.

* * *

Well, hello/welcome back! How was it? I've been trying to keep them all in character as much as possible, because one of the things that bothers me is when the characters' characters are twisted beyond recognition. A little OOC is fun. Too much is, well, too much :) So, in short, please tell me if you catch anything blatantly OOC.  
Also, **Ragione d'Essere** is Italian for **Raison d'Etre**. Which is French for "reason of being" aka "reason for living" aka ... I can't think of anything else XD "Reason of life"? "Meaning of life"? It sounds coolest in French. Let's stop butchering that language. I'm sure you get the point. :)  
Thanks to the people who review and make my day brighter! If you don't...  
_Please_ review? Pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top? (I forgot how that goes exactly...)  
It will turn that frown upside down!

:( ~This frown.


	3. Everyday Life, Azalya Style

**So... **I've just realized something: The way I've made main characters A and B Dino and Hibari... makes it seem like Dino and Hibari are going to be romantically involved at some point. Which may or may not be true. So I've changed it to just Dino. Which makes it seem like Dino and Aza are going to be romantically involved at some point. Which is absolutely untrue. I'm not a fan of incest. With one major ItaSasu exception (^/////^). Oh, and HiKao (double "^/////^"! Twincest *swoon*). I don't even know if that's the right fan-acronym thing, but... AHEM! For clarity's sake, the main canon characters are, in no particular order, as follows...  
Guys: Dino, Reborn, Yamamoto, Hibari  
Girls (to a lesser extent): Kyoko, Hana  
The main female characters will be my OCs, Aza and Chiara, who's yet to make an appearance, mmm... :)  
-_-; Onward... sorry 'bout the rant, but the bare essentials of it were necessary...

**WARNING: **This chapter is mostly fluffy-fluffy school life. Therefore, if you would rather not learn about Aza's life at Namimori... *shrugs* I'm letting you know ahead of time :) I am personally a fan of chapters like this. I have a thing about characterization, and I want Aza to have a good, solid development before we throw her into a hot spot of trouble ;)

Please forgive my typos :) If it's something so confusing that it can't be reasoned out, please let me know :D

* * *

**Chapter 3: Everyday Life, Azalya Style** or **Recruitment**

The shadow falling over her face gave Azalya a second's warning before the shadow's owner kicked her desk without restraint. The textbooks she had stacked in a pyramid fell onto the floor with audible thuds in the sudden hush that fell over the room. Azalya lifted her gaze from the two mechanical pencils rolling off her desk to the individual looming above her.

Not unexpectedly, it was Gokudera Hayato: delinquent, Mafioso, and Tsuna fanboy.

"Yes?" She beamed up at him, flashing very white and straight teeth, courtesy of a hellish three years of braces and minty Crest toothpaste.

There was an outbreak of muttering.

"She'll be killed!"

"Run, Cavallone-san!"

"Oh, he's so dreamy..."

Gokudera glowered at her, looking truly intimidating. "What," he growled, sounding far from human, "are you doing here?"

She resisted the urge to scoot back and kept the smile plastered on her face. "I'm in this class, Hayato."

"I've never seen you here before—you must have come for another go at the Tenth!"

Azalya sighed deeply. She did it twice to demonstrate her disdain at his single-mindedness. "This 'Japanese tradition' is getting old. You should start paying more attention to your classmates."

The silver-haired young man leaned down obscenely close, close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke and gunpowder clinging to him. He opened his mouth, probably to say something rude, but another person ran up before he could make a sound.

"Gokudera-kun," Tsuna exclaimed, panting, "what are you doing? I told you not to go terrorizing our classmates."

"But this person—" Gokudera insisted, practically sticking his finger up Azalya's nose when he pointed at her.

Tsuna looked at Azalya with a mixture of shock and relief in his pale brown eyes. "Oh, it's, er, Cavallone-san. You really are in our class. Oh, yeah, I remember, you transferred here at the beginning of the year!"

Azalya smiled and rolled her eyes without a word. She hid the flash of guilt at the sight of his beaten-up face. _It was only five minutes_. _Five minutes isn't that long. Right?_ She answered herself, _It is if you're getting mauled by someone with the Dying Will_. Luckily for her guilty conscious, his injuries didn't look nearly as bad as they had yesterday. His black eye was turning a yellow-green color and most of the bruises had faded. In fact, it was as though they had been healing for a week.

The classroom door rolled open with a snap, which drew her attention away from Tsuna's face, and Mawabi Kugayara stormed in. "Seats," she barked, glaring pointedly at Gokudera, Tsuna, and the gaggle of onlookers around Azalya's desk. Everyone scattered, and there was a cacophony of chairs scrapping against the floor.

The young teacher cast a scrutinizing eye over her assembled students, lingering a moment longer than necessary on Azalya, who had to pick up her textbook and pencils. Azalya was trying to reach under her neighbor's desk without leaving her seat and failing comically.

Ignoring this and the tittering from other students, Mawabi went on tersely, "Asakura, Iwao, Yamada, absent. Anyone else? No one? All right."

"She's ultra-ultra pissed today," the brown-haired girl sitting in front of Azalya muttered.

Azalya succeeded in hooking the chemistry textbook out and restacked the three. She had no idea where her pencils had rolled off to. _I'll have to borrow one. Why is Seiko absent? I really don't want to ask someone else... Good thing P.E.'s first period._

The bell rang, but no one moved. They all exchanged apprehensive glances with the people sitting closest to them. Mawabi snapped her fingers. "Well? What're you waiting for? Go get changed!"

* * *

The unfortunate sound of the baseball bat contacting the ball broke Azalya's daydream. It wasn't often she let herself drift off during P.E. She wanted to play in a competitive game, which was why she had joined as the only girl in the guy's class. And after all, there was always the risk of getting hit in the head by a ball. No Good Tsuna seemed to manage this just about every class, and it looked pretty painful. But for once, she was positioned in the outfield, so far away that even the guys in the class either couldn't hit the ball to her or were just too lazy. Except for one.

_Crack!_

A crack of that magnitude could only mean one thing: Yamamoto Takeshi, reputed for his lack of restraint during P.E., had hit the ball.

"Cavallone," someone shouted, "catch it!"

_You have got to be kidding me_, Azalya thought as she tilted her head to follow the fast-moving ball's high, curving path. She raised her gloved hand, blocking out the sun the way they did on TV, and took three steps to her right.

The impact of the ball against the glove sent jarring pain through her elbow.

Azalya took the smoking ball in her right hand and tossed it up and down. "Sorry, Yamamoto-kun," she called to the black-haired young man amid shouts of congratulation and elation from her team and groans from Yamamoto's. "That's three outs and game over!"

The black-haired young man let out a whistle. "Nice catch."

Azalya grinned and lobbed the ball to him as she shook off her glove and threw it on the pile accumulating near the bleachers. "You can keep this as a souvenir. I'll even sign it for you."

Yamamoto laughed and dropped the ball in a cracked white bucket. "It's the school's, isn't it? But, aw man. I never thought a girl'd get me out." He gave her a congratulatory slap on the back, and she stumbled a few steps in surprise. "You should join the girl's team. You're not bad at batting either."

The blue-eyed girl laughed. "There _isn't _a girl's team, Yamamoto-kun. Why don't I join the guy's instead?"

She'd meant this as a joke, but Yamamoto nodded thoughtfully. "Oi, Tanaka," he called to one of his baseball teammates, "whaddya think?"

"I think you're supposed to be helping the losing team clean up the field instead of sneaking off," Tanaka Hiraku said in an annoyed voice as he carried an armful of discarded baseball gloves across the field towards them. He muttered something, probably unflattering, about Tsuna's baseball skills (or lack thereof.) "Get your ass over here, Yamamoto."

"Ahaha, then excuse me, Azalya."

"I'll help," Azalya found herself offering, jogging to catch up with her two classmates and picking up the bucket of baseballs. "I played the game and used the stuff," she said with a chuckle when they directed looks of exaggerated delight and astonishment her way. "It's only fair I help clean it up."

"That's what I call sportsmanship," Yamamoto said with a wide grin. "So? Whaddya say, Tanaka?"

Tanaka looked at him in confusion. "About what?"

"About Azalya playing baseball for us."

Tanaka looked her up and down, sizing up her skinny body and said, "You can hit the ball far enough and run pretty fast. Not to mention you caught the ball _Yamamoto_ hit. In my book, that's a definite yes. We'll still have to take it up with the captain, though."

"Um, I wasn't really serious," she clarified awkwardly. "I'm more of a football person..."

"Baseball's the sport of Japan," Tanaka declared fervently. "It's heart and soul."

"Shouldn't that be sumo?" Azalya said with a smile. "Baseball's from America."

"England, actually," Yamamoto corrected. "But I get your point. Why not give it a go, Azalya? We have practice everyday after school—come today and check it out," he urged.

Surprised that he actually knew that much about the baseball of history, infected by his love of the sport, and slightly flattered, Azalya agreed without really thinking. "I'll be there."

They dumped the things in the storeroom just as the warning bell rung.

"Ah, crap," Yamamoto groaned as he dashed out, "Mawabi'll kill us if we're late for Lit! I don't even have time to change."

Azalya ran at a similar pace to the girls' locker room, which was practically empty when she arrived. She hurriedly stripped off her t-shirt and track pants, stuffing them in her duffle bag. Then she pulled on the short-sleeved white blouse and blue skirt. She slipped her feet into the soft cotton indoor shoes, choosing not to change socks to save time. Without bothering to tie the red ribbon around her neck, she slung her duffle bag and satchel over her shoulder and dashed out of the room—

Only to collide with Yamamoto, who was standing in the middle of the hall outside the door.

"You're sure in a hurry," Yamamoto commented as he steadied her. He picked up the ribbon, which she had dropped, and draped it around her neck. "You didn't even do your ribbon."

She thanked him and tied it into a bow as they fast walked down the hall. "What were you doing outside the girls' locker room? Spying?" she joked.

"I was waiting for you. After all, isn't it better to be late with another person than show up by yourself?"

"What if I'd finished before you and left?" she couldn't help asking the tall youth.

"You wouldn't have," he said confidently, looking down at her steadily. "That's part of being a good sport, too."

She felt her face heating up for reasons unknown. "I-I'm not sure the definition of 'sportsmanship' extends this far," Azalya said with a nervous laugh.

"Really? That's too bad." Before she could ask him what he meant, Yamamoto slid open the door to classroom 2-A.

Their classmates were all sitting at their desks, scribbling furiously on a paper that looked suspiciously like a test—something their teacher most definitely had not mentioned the day before. None of them looked up at the interruption, though several paused to gnaw on the ends of their pencils in panic. The irate Mawabi Kugayara, however, greeted her two truant students with a cold smile. "Ten points off your score, Yamamoto and Cavallone, unless your essays are truly outstanding. And CavallonSit down and get started."

"Yamamoto-kun," she requested on impulse before he went to his seat, "can I borrow a pencil?"

"Sure." He grinned, pulling an old-fashioned wooden pencil from his pocket. "It's already sharpened."

"Thanks."

* * *

When Azalya walked into the Chemistry Lab Room with Seiko, who'd come in halfway through Literature, at the beginning of third period, everyone already in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to face their teacher, Hoshino Saru. The middle-aged man with badly bleached hair and a perpetually runny nose reacted with a predictable glare and scoff.

Azalya, who managed to skip science at least two or three times a week while simultaneously maintaining an A average in the course, wasn't in the old-school teacher's good books. Her skipping no doubt infuriated the man, who was now factoring zeros into her grade every time she was absent. She was pretty sure the fact that she was a foreigner played no small part in the man's hatred of her.

"Good morning, Hoshino-sensei," she chirped brightly from the doorway and give him a small salute. "I am present. What's on the agenda today?"

His thick eyebrows, which were pitch black and clashed horribly with his orange hair, twitched. "Everyone," he said evenly, "take out your lab equipment out. We're having a little practical exam." The forced calm in his voice was belied by his continual twitching and loud sniffing.

There was a collective groan. Seiko poked Azalya accusatorily in the side, but she was the only one who blamed the Italian youth. Most of the other students looked on their teacher with undiluted loathing.

"I'm out," Gokudera declared, scrapping his chair loudly against the floor as he stood. "See you later, Tenth."

"Stop right there, young man!" Hoshino ordered with relish. His unfounded hatred of Azalya was only rivaled by his easily justified detestation of Gokudera. "Do you want to fail this class? You must take this test."

Gokudera actually halted, making the teacher smirk, but what he said was: "I won't fail an easy class like this by missing one test."

"_Au contraire,_" the Chemistry teacher sang with truly deplorable pronunciation. "I can and will fail you if you continue to skip my class." He was looking at Gokudera, but Azalya knew the words were for her benefit, too.

Gokudera shrugged stiffly. "Whatever. Like I said, I'm out."

Azalya moved out of his way without a sideways glance and proceeded to her lab bench on the other side of the room. She was starting to notice several parallels between Gokudera and herself. They both played hooky quite a lot; they rallied around a Mafia boss with undying devotion, though Gokudera's was rather unappreciated; and, until she had quit yesterday, they had both been heavy smokers. These similarities did not make her happy.

"You look kinda upset, Asa-chan," Seiko observed with concern as she set up the Bunsen burner. "Are you worried about the test?"

"Not at all." Azalya grinned at her short-haired friend. "We'll ace it, just like always."

* * *

Lunch break came as a much-wanted blessing that afternoon after a hectic, nicotine-free morning. The afternoon heat that replaced the mild temperature earlier did not.

Azalya lounged against the thick trunk of an oak tree, trying to fit as much of herself as possible in the scant shade its leaves provided, as she munched on her sandwich. She sat with three other girls under the tree, all of them gathered around the trunk to avoid the sweltering sun. It was unseasonably hot for June, and Azalya was sweating just sitting there. "I hope it cools down next week," she complained as she fanned herself with her free hand. "It feels like we're in Hawaii or something. Why aren't we allowed to eat inside? Air conditioning, I want air conditioning...!"

Seiko, whom Azalya couldn't see because she sat on the opposite side of the trunk, giggled. "We're lucky we changed into our summer uniforms this year before it got hot," she said. There was a pause while she chewed on something homemade and decidedly better-tasting than a sandwich. "Last year it hit the thirties in May! Remember, guys?"

Azalya saw Sasagawa Kyoko and Kurokawa Hana nod from the corner of her eyes, flashes of light off brown and black hair. Hana, inquisitive as always, asked, "How hot is it usually in Italy?"

She thought back to last year and tried to give an answer that wasn't idealized by longing. "Low twenties, I guess. Maybe higher." Azalya flopped down onto her side with a despondent sigh. "But it's so hoooooot."

Kyoko giggled. "This is your first summer in Japan, isn't it?"

"Yeah..." The brown-haired girl blew a gentle stream of air at a bug resting on a tall blade of grass near her nose.

"There're lots of fun things to do during the Japanese summer," her best friend declared enthusiastically, and Azalya could just imagine the typically radiant smile adorning her face. "Festivals and fireworks and pools and yukata—"

"—and goldfish and cicadas and summer homework," Kyoko threw in. "I'm getting excited just thinking about it!"

"What's with that strange list, Kyoko?" Hana laughed.

The list didn't sound half bad to the Italian youth. Certainly, she wouldn't shoot down her friends' suggestions just because she was sulking about the heat. "I'll count on you to treat me to the best Japanese summer, then," Azalya teased.

"Leave it to us!"

Sounds of chewing and chopsticks clattering against flower-print and Hello Kitty lunchboxes.

She blew again at the ant, which was still perched precariously on the tip of the blade. It fluttered thin, transparent wings and flew off a few seconds later. At first Azalya thought it was just an ant with pathetically delayed reflexes, but then an unexpected black leather shoe flattened the patch of grass in front of her face. Her blue eyes traveled up the navy blue slacks and white shirt to the tanned, grinning face of a baseball nut.

"Yamamoto-kun," she greeted with mild surprise, standing up and brushing off her uniform. She couldn't imagine why he'd search her out during lunch. "What's up?"

"Not much. Do you usually sit like this?" He gestured at their setup around the tree with Seiko facing south, Hana west, Kyoko east, and Azalya west.

Azalya nodded vigorously. "Yeah. We're the guardians of this tree's spirit, after all." She cursed herself the instant the last word left her mouth. _'Guardians of this'—! Did I honestly just say that? What kind of lame jokes am I making?_

But Yamamoto laughed loudly. "That's really funny!"

_It's not funny at all!_

"Well, I came by to tell you that we meet in Baseball Field Three. Good work guarding the tree spirit, haha! I'll see ya."

Azalya turned back to the tree to find her three friends standing—in a row ordered by height, no less—with identical grins on their faces. She groaned melodramatically, knowing she was in for an unpleasant interrogation. "What are you, Cingular: raising the bar?"

Seiko ignored this and patted Azalya on the head. "Yamamoto-kun, eh? He's a good catch so don't let him slip away!"

"Wha—"

"If you ask me," Hana said with a knowing look, "it's Yamamoto that has his eye on her."

"No one asked—"

Kyoko, sandwiched between Seiko and Hana, gazed at Azalya with her big brown eyes so full of shining excitement and adoration that Azalya faltered. "No way~ Our Asa-chan... Love at first sight." She sighed longingly. "It's so romantic."

"H-How can it be 'at first sight'? I've known him since April," she pointed out.

"Hehehe. But you two looked like such a good couple when I saw you together the first time!"

Azalya sweat dropped. "Ah, Kyoko, that's not what 'love at first sight' means..."

Hana clucked her tongue. "But that aside, to ask you out on a date in front of your friends... Yamamoto's got guts."

Azalya froze and sputtered, "Date!"

"Meeting in the baseball field, too," Seiko mused. "It's really unusual."

"You're tall so you fit with him," Kyoko continued, "Yamamoto-kun'll definitely reach 180!"

"He must really like milk," Hana speculated.

Azalya unfroze and muttered, "I think you're all going off on a tangent, not to mention horribly misinterpreting the situation. Yamamoto-kun and I aren't dating or anything—we probably can't even be properly called friends. He was just telling me where the baseball team meets after school."

They cocked their heads on one beat, with even better timing than synchronized swimmers, and said in unison, "Heh?"

"I didn't have the chance to tell you earlier: I might play for the team," she explained. "Yamamoto-kun and Tanaka-kun suggested it after P.E." This wasn't strictly true, but Azalya felt it would be counterproductive to say Yamamoto alone had made the offer. "So he was telling me where they're having practice today."

"Heeeeh, so he's using baseball as a ploy to get closer to our Azalya!"

"Wrong!" she bellowed. _They're never gonna let this go, are they!_

"We're never gonna let this go," they affirmed, linking hands and dancing around Azalya in a circle. "Yamamoto and Azalya kissing in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G...!"

Azalya twitched. "Wrong!"

* * *

**The Much-Loved Author Rant Time:**

I looked up Yamamoto's height. He's 177cm. That's 5'9"-ish (I think... *too lazy to calculate* XD;) That's tall. He's 14 and Asian. That's very, very tall. I, by the way, am 17 and Asian and I am most definitely not that tall. Then again, I'm a girl and... AHEM! Anyways, I don't know exactly how tall Azalya is, but she's taller than Gokudera. She's not taller than Yamamoto. That would be absurd XD And funny, but I have to be realistic. Just like the Dying Will is realistic. *nodnod*  
So what was with this chapter? I know, I know... Chapters 1/2 set the stage for some nice action but... Despite being the Mafia, our lovely protagonists are teenagers and that means they go to school! And that means school ruins things as they get good. It's in its nature. Having said that, I feel the need to point out the fact that I do actually enjoy school. I can't deny, however, that school gets in the way of lots of things I would like to do, such as staying up into the wee hours of the morning.

**Questions? Answers!**

"Chiavorone" vs "Cavallone" and all other naming enigmas:I honestly use the form of the name that is most aesthetically appealing *sweat* And I think Cavallone makes more sense 'cause Cavallo is horse in Italian :) I don't know what the 'ne' is XD; The real reason is I just like it better, I guess ^-^;;  
Therefore, Hibari is Kyouya where he could be Kyoya. Kyoko, on the other hand, is Kyoko where she could be Kyouko. =D

So... if you have questions and review anonymously, I'll answer them like this :) If you leave questions in a review and you're a registered user, I'll message and probably put it up anyways so other people know the answer, too :D

Therefore... **Review!** It's 3 seconds if you want to make my day brighter :) 10 if you want to make my story better :D **Review!**


	4. The Test

**Chapter 4: The Test**

Azalya groaned as the obnoxious clanging school bell jolted her out of a light doze and straight into a splitting headache. Today was Monday, and as a general rule, Mondays were the worst days of the week. But this particular Monday morning was even worse. It was the Monday five days after she'd quit smoking, and despite having struggled through the rumored "three day hump," Azalya's brain was not coping well with the lack of nicotine and sleep.

"Good morning," a familiar bright voice chirped above her. "You look tired, Asa-chan. Didn't you sleep well?"

Azalya sat up in her seat, yawning. She forced a smile for her friend but failed to make her voice passably pleasant. "I am _fatigued_, Seiko. And no, I didn't sleep well."

Seiko sat down on Azalya's left and pushed her chair closer. "Good thing I brought you a present." The black-haired girl smiled and held up a small plastic grocery bag.

Azalya stared at it blankly as she took it from her friend. "A barf bag? Thanks."

Seiko giggled. "No, silly. Look inside."

Inside the bag lay a pack of candy cigarettes, multivitamins, and a bottle of cranberry juice. Azalya looked at her smiling friend with gratitude. Her eyes started filling with tears—she told herself it was a side effect of quitting—and she blinked rapidly. "How'd you know?" Azalya asked gruffly to hide how choked her voice had become.

"You were weird last week. Tense and cranky and tired. Every time you saw Gokudera-kun smoking, you looked like a starving man who'd found a feast. And you don't stink anymore," she added, sniffing loudly and wrinkling her nose for good measure. "I thought this might help. I'm not stupid, you know"

"Thanks. Sorry for not telling you. I was... what's the word?" She waved her hands vaguely in the air.

"Scared?" Seiko suggested. "Untrusting?"

She winced and chewed on her lip. "Not exactly. Maybe a little. Embarrassed and I was starting to doubt if I could do it and... I don't know how to say it better." Color rose in her cheeks when Seiko giggled. "Don't make fun of me, hey. I haven't been speaking Japanese that long."

"I'm sorry." Seiko smiled sympathetically. "If you need help, I'm here."

Azalya swallowed and gave the other girl a quick hug. It was nice to have support. It also made what she planned to do a lot easier. "Hey, Seiko, can you do me another favor?"

"Of course," the petite girl answered at once.

"I want to go to the Smoke Hole—not during class," she added hastily when Seiko looked reprovingly at her, "during lunch. Can you go with me?"

"Of course."

* * *

A warm, moist breeze played across Azalya's skin as she waited for her friend at the back of the school building. It was only marginally cooler than last week, but Azalya was grateful for the dip in temperature all the same.

After a few minutes, Seiko came around the corner, shooting nervous glances over her shoulder every few feet. "You sure you want to do this?" she asked, her pretty face screwed up and shining with a faint sheen of sweat. "Isn't it too early?"

Azalya shook her head, pushing off from the wall and leading Seiko to a half-hidden path in the trees. "I have to do it fast. That's why I quit cold turkey."

"What if you can't help it and start again?"

"I don't have any cigarettes."

"What if someone offers one to you?"

Azalya grinned at her over-worried friend. "You'll beat them up for me."

Seiko sighed, looking excessively distraught for being the anchor in such a simple task. "All right," she agreed, subdued. "All right, but you have to beat them up yourself. I don't want to fight with someone on crack!"

The Japanese girl's worries, it turned out, were completely groundless. The Smoke Hole, a run-down shed that wasn't quite off the school grounds, was deserted.

"It stinks," Seiko said, her voice muffled by the hands she'd pressed over her nose and mouth. "How can you stand it?"

"It's not so bad." Azalya inhaled deeply, breathing in the heavy, musky scents of cigarette smoke and other, probably illegal, substances she couldn't identify. They were duller, not as sharp as she remembered, nor as pleasant. But she almost smiled as she reminisced about the time she'd spent leaning against the side of the shed, content in her chemical cloud. She missed that, missed it almost more than she missed Italy. But then the fights she'd seen between addicts, the shady deals, and the unfortunate victims of their jonesing came to mind, and the girl frowned in sudden realization. _I shouldn't have brought Seiko. What the hell was I thinking?_

"Asa-chan?" Seiko was frightened, and kept trying to look everywhere at once as if she expected a crackhead to randomly crop up and kill them. "How are you doing?"

"Better than I thought. You're right; this place is—"

"You!" a low, authoritative voice said loudly, making them both jump. "What're you doing out here?"

Azalya wheeled around to face a scowling prefect, the same one that'd cornered her last week. _Uh oh_, she thought as her heart sank guiltily. It was funny because, for once, she hadn't actually done anything wrong. "Just hanging out," she said with false airiness, running a hand through her wavy brown hair. "Waiting for lunch to end."

Breadhead sniffed the air experimentally like a dog.

"I wasn't smoking," she said immediately.

"Smoking," Breadhead said almost as quickly, "is illegal. It's also against school rules."

"If something's illegal, it's automatically against school rules," Azalya sneered. "You don't need to say it separately."

Seiko let out a low moan. "We weren't smoking," she put in, sounding close to tears. "Honest, Kusakabe-senpai." She tugged on Azalya's sleeve. "Come on, Asa-chan. Let's go."

"Calm down," Azalya muttered at her panicked friend out of the corner of her mouth. "He can't do anything to us." She was wrong.

"You've gotten off with too many warnings, Cavallone," he was saying. "Come with me. Both of you."

Azalya didn't budge. She grabbed Seiko's elbow when she tried to walk forward. "Go with you where?"

"To the Reception Room." Insert dramatic music here.

Seiko groaned, "Now you've done it. Now you've really screwed up."

Despite reassuring her friend and following Breadhead with well-feigned confidence, Azalya couldn't help but concur deep inside. _This is not good_, she thought as they walked down the hall, _even if I survive Kyouya. Dino will scold me, and Chiara will laugh and laugh..._

They stopped outside the room half the students in the school didn't even know existed. Breadhead knocked twice on the door before he slid it open. "Kyou-san," he said to an apparently empty room.

The Reception Room itself was a normal, if immaculately clean, lounge with several small couches and a table. Not something she'd expected the disreputable Disciplinary Committee to use as their base. Azalya had envisioned something along the lines of the Smoke Hole. The Reception Room looked more like a model home.

"What is it?" Hibari Kyouya's voice, deep and detached, said from behind them.

Azalya whirled. Her first impression of Hibari, whom she'd never seen up close before, was that he was a normal student. Except he was dressed in way too many layers for the summer weather. His long pants were part of the uniform, but the black-haired student wore a long-sleeved shirt over which he'd draped a black jacket. Just looking at him in his get-up made Azalya feel too warm. Then again, that sensation might have been caused by his indisputable good looks and supercilious aura that was nonetheless sexy. And didn't she have anything better to think about than his looks, like perhaps the distinct possibility that she and Seiko were about to get thrashed for her mistake?

Hibari yawned, walked over to the couch, and then turned to face them. His narrow grey eyes were unconcerned and apathetic. He probably dealt with hundreds of situations like this a day.

Kusakabe informed his leader, "I found these two at the Smoke Hole."

"I wasn't smoking," Azalya explained quickly, aware of Seiko trembling beside her. Her friend's painfully tight fingers were digging into Azalya's upper arm. "We were at the Smoke Hole, but neither of us was smoking. I quit. I was just going as a test, you know, to see if I could resist the sight and the smell. Seiko was just there as an anchor to help me. In any case, she's never smoked, so you can't be punishing her."

"In other words," Hibari said softly, "you are too weak to do that on your own and had to team up."

"No, I am not weak." she said before she could stop herself. "In other words, I am making an effort to stop doing something illegal and you are obstructing my reformation. Seiko is supporting me. And you"—she jerked her head at Hibari's loyal underling—"can let her go to class. She's never done anything wrong. Lunch is almost over."

"Kyou-san?"

Hibari inclined his head. "Let the minnow go."

Seiko started, half-afraid, half-grateful, and a little offended, "Asa-chan—"

The tall third-year student with the out-of-style pompadour clapped a heavy hand on Seiko's shoulder, effectively cutting her off. From the corner of her eye, Azalya saw her friend cast a terrified look at Breadhead. "Come with me," Kusakabe said almost kindly as he steered her out of the room.

When the door slid closed again, the grey-eyed boy said without inflection, "I detest people who gather together in weak herds."

Azalya's temper, recently so volatile, flared. "Look, you antisocial little prick. What's your Disciplinary Committee—a group. What's the School Board of Education—a group. Hell, the federal government is made up of committees. Unless you plan to cut down all opposition by yourself—and that's some 7 billion versus you—I suggest you get used to teaming up. _Got that_?" she finished nastily, resisting the urge to snap her fingers in a Z formation.

Hibari was silent. But then, he almost always was.

She fisted her hands at her sides, clutching the pleated blue fabric of her skirt, aware that she'd just done something extremely stupid and ready for the consequences. Or as ready as anyone could be for Hibari. Which is to say, she was absolutely unprepared when her adversary lunged across the room with a pair of tonfa she hadn't seen him draw.

The first tonfa smashed into Azalya's unguarded torso, making an unpleasant sound rather like a mixture between a smack and a thunk, and sent her stumbling back into the wall. She managed to avoid a blow to her face by twisting her body so the attack fell instead on her left shoulder. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and tried to say upright. But when the next one cracked against her left hip, landing squarely on an already existing bruise from baseball, she gasped and crumpled.

The bell rang. The chime's off-key G echoed in her ears.

Azalya lay where she had fallen, her cheek pressed against the cool tiled floor, alternating between coughing and panting. Nothing felt broken, but nothing felt normal either. Eventually, her body stopped sending glaring pain messages to her brain for long enough that she could struggle to her feet and lean against the wall.

It was pathetic. More than pathetic because Hibari hadn't even been fighting seriously. She realized just how lowly he thought she was when she saw Hibari lounging on the sofa, his feet propped up on the white plastic table in the middle of the room. His eyes were closed and, for all she could see, he appeared to be sleeping.

Even in his sleep, he looked arrogant and assured and completely in control.

A part of her wanted to kill the sleeping Hibari, and another deplored the first for unfairness, but most of her knew he'd destroy her just as easily asleep as awake. Azalya, nursing her pride and multiple injuries, wisely chose to withdraw. "Bastard," she whispered when she was halfway down the hall, and there was no chance of being overheard. "You hypocritical, violent bastard."

* * *

Math class. Even on a good day, algebra bored her to tears. Today, after Hibari, she was in no mood to listen to the teacher's nonsensical droning. Instead of copying the notes from the board, Azalya was staring at Yamamoto, who sat two rows ahead of her to the left, doodling in her open notebook, and trying to find a way to sit without pain when she heard the teacher call her name, "Cavallone-kun!"

She jerked her eyes away from the boy, fully expecting to have to answer a complicated question, and looked at her teacher, who was standing by the door with one of the secretaries. The secretary smiled placidly. "Cavallone-san, you have a phone call."

Bewildered and slightly worried, Azalya closed her drawing-filled notebook and stood. She felt the most of her classmates' curious eyes following her limping walk to the door until the teacher's waspish questions forced their attention back to loci.

"Who called?" Azalya asked the secretary. "Did they say?" She couldn't hide how nervous she was. The only thing worse than receiving a phone call in the middle of class was a phone call in the wee hours of the morning, and they both promised bad news.

"Someone named Dino," she said with a calming smile, though this was likely the least reassuring thing she could have said next to "It's the police; they've come to arrest you."

Her throat went dry. "Did he say why?"

"No." The long-haired woman opened the door to the office. "Take your time, Cavallone-san."

Azalya nodded her thanks and picked up the receiver lying on the cluttered desk, clearing her throat. "Hello?"

"Yo," Dino, his voice tinny and staticy, greeted her cheerfully. "How's it goin' in your neck of the woods?"

"Fine, I guess."

"I heard you had a little scrap with Kyouya."

"Wha—" She coughed to cover her surprise and flushed. "How'd you find out so quickly?"

"A little birdie told me." He laughed.

"Are you angry?" she asked sheepishly.

"Not angry," he assured her. "That Kyouya's a loose cannon. He'll have a lot of trouble later if he doesn't respect the family alliances."

"You mean Reborn is definitely—"

"Japan's nice, isn't it?" he interrupted.

The sudden change in topic threw her off. "What?"

"It's been a little hot for my tastes, but the weather forecast predicted rain, which should make things cooler next week.

"Dino, what are you—"

"By the way, bad news, there's been a mass breakout from Vendicare Prison, and I'm really looking forward to the cooler weather next week."

"_W-What_?" she sputtered, nearly dropping the phone. In her shock, she slipped back into Italian. "A mass breakout? From Vendicare? When? Who? _How_?"

Still speaking in Japanese, Dino said, "Who knows? They're investigating the matter back in Italy, so I have to go back for a while, at least until we know what's going on. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried," she said slowly. It was good he was going back to Italy. He was, after all, the Cavallone family's boss and he needed to be there to keep Chiara in check as well as deal with whatever problems arose. And the breakout—the _mass_ breakout—from Vendicare certainly qualified as a Class A problem. "Good luck. I'll keep an eye on things here just in case."

"I'm counting on you."

"'Okay. Bye—"

"Wait, I'm not done yet," Dino said hurriedly.

"There's more? This better be good news," Azalya warned.

She could almost hear his smile through the phone. "It's good. Vongola's successor issues have calmed down a bit. It seems Reborn's progress report and the Outside Advisor managed to convince Vongola IX that Tsuna's got potential."

"So... Chiara?" Azalya prompted.

"So Chiara backed down. She's being usually quiet these days."

Azalya demanded, "You call this good news?"

"It's comparatively better," he said defensively. "Well, I gotta run—fly. Take care."

She sighed. "You, too. Ciao." Azalya hung up and hit her palm against her forehead. Even Dino's "good" news had some very dangerous implications, and his bad news was simply atrocious in nature. All of it promised a mountain load of work for her sometime in the near future. "Just once," she complained to the empty air because she couldn't talk to a real person about this, "just once, I wish things'd work out on their own, and I could take a vacation somewhere the Mafia doesn't exist. Maybe like Pluto, the planet-that-isn't."

"Cavallone-san?"

Azalya started. She'd forgotten that the secretary had been standing in the doorway the entire time. "No, nothing. I was talking to myself," she said with a smile. "Thanks. I'll just go back to class..." She waved and slid the door closed behind her and then paced up and down the next hallway while she tried to decide what to do.

She needed to find Reborn, that much was clear, but she had absolutely no idea what he did all day. She could ask Tsuna, but that would mean admitting she needed his help, and that was out of the question. Except there was really no other option but to ask the no good candidate for the Vongola X seat. The day was really intent on humiliating her. First, Seiko'd found out about her quitting, then she'd gotten beaten up by Hibari, and now she had to bow to No Good Tsuna's superior knowledge. Azalya grumbled and kicked the wall in frustration.

To her horror, a 1x1 meter section of the wall she'd just kicked popped off and clattered onto the ground. She picked it up, swearing mentally, and bent down. What she saw made her forget her anger momentarily. There, in the wall, was a miniature bedroom complete with a bed, nightstand, and lamp. And on the pillow, Reborn's signature fedora lay sideways, the head and body connected to it hidden by white covers.

"Reborn? Reborn-san?" Azalya said in a hushed voice, eying the lump under the covers.

No answer.

She held her breath as she reached a hand out cautiously and peeled back the white cloth to reveal—

"Stag beetles! What the hell!" Azalya withdrew her hand quickly as one of the disgusting writhing mound attempted to craw onto her hand. She shoved the cut-out piece of wall back in before any of the creepy insects could fly out. "Who puts stag beetles inside the wall of a school? Who cuts holes into the walls of a school anyways?" Still frustrated, entirely embarrassed, and now pissed off, Azalya stomped away.

Inside the wall, the mound of beetles sat up, and a small green chameleon dropped onto the fedora. "Ciaossu," said the mound. Then it flopped over and started snoring.

* * *

**Right-o. Who wants to start?**

We'll start with Hibari. He's finally here~ -woot- Azalya's done tons of crap at school, so you can't think she'd get away with it XD How do you think he is? Not OOC, I hope... Is he? o.o; I don't know about him going to sleep right after, because he seems like the kind of person that wouldn't sleep with someone else in the room, except he does o.O; I loved that chapter where he was in the hospital and all those guys got beat up xD;;  
Does anyone find it at all odd that all the Mafia people can speak Japanese? I mean, Tsuna can understand everyone he meets except I-pin, and I don't think Tsuna's exactly a multi-lingual person... Maybe there's a language requirement in the Vongola -_-; Or the Varia are extra talented. Who knows.  
Does anyone know if Mukuro and his buddies were in Vendicare at first? I checked the manga, but it just says 'high security Italian prison' and... that's not really informative xD; So I decided there were in there. If not, tell me, and I will change it to where ever there were.

Also I made a mistake in my last ranty part. At the time of this story, Yamamoto is already 15. I just thought I'd mention that 'cause... I wanted to XD;

Thanks a bunch to reviewers/subscribers/favorite-ers! It means a lot to me :D  
(And Hibari-is-love, I'd love to email you but... I don't know your email ^-^;;;)  
Ciaociao~ (Apparently, according to my French teacher, French people say this, too ^-^)


	5. Bloody Footprints

**Chapter 5: Bloody Footprints**

Azalya prowled restlessly around the small hospital room, occasionally throwing herself into a chair before returning to her pacing. As with the past few days, the brunette was fueled purely by frustration.

"Could you stop pacing?" the hospital bed's occupant finally asked of her. "You're making me feel fidgety to the extreme."

"Sorry," she bit out, walking over to the white-haired boy's bedside. He was grinning rather stupidly, and she tried not to look at the gaping hole in his mouth where his teeth used to be. "So, the Kokuyo student who attacked you... Describe him."

"He had big hands to the extreme, definitely good for boxing. And a really strong punch, especially the hook. And his footwork—"

"That's not what I meant!" Azalya took several deep breaths to calm down. "Hair color, eye color, height, identifying features..."

Ryohei thought for a moment. "He'd be a super featherweight competitor."

She let out the breath explosively. This was impossible. How was she supposed to get answers from a guy who couldn't see past boxing? Azalya sent her eyes heavenward, only the ceiling was in the way. "Aren't there any normal people in Japan?"

"Normal people don't get recruited by the Mafia."

Azalya jumped and turned to face Reborn. She'd been expecting him since she'd texted Tsuna with the news that Ryohei'd been attacked, but she hadn't heard him come in. "Where's Tsuna?"

Reborn cocked his head, as if listening.

A few minutes later, the door slid open again, and a panting Tsuna stumbled in. "R-Reborn, you're still a baby so how can you move so fast...?" He bent over double and took several seconds to recover his breath. "Are you all right, Onii-san?"

Before Ryohei could answer, another figure burst into the room, and Ryohei quickly pulled the surgical mask over his mouth. "Onii-chan," Kyoko cried distraughtly, bypassing Azalya, Tsuna, and Reborn without seeing them, "why on Earth would you climb a bathhouse chimney? And how did you fall off the roof?"

"Ehehe," laughed Ryohei stupidly. It sounded even more stupid than normal because his voice was muffled by the mask hiding his missing teeth.

"Are you really going to be all right?"

"Of course!" her idiotic brother yelped. "It's just a sprain."

"You're lying! A sprain doesn't look like this!"

Azalya almost laughed out loud at the look of utter shock and disbelief on Tsuna's face. It wasn't hard to tell what he was thinking. "It's this," she told him quietly, pulling out her cell phone and selecting an application. "The _Top Ten Thousand Most Ridiculous and Outrageous Excuses of All Time_ app. I think Kyoko's the only one who's ever believed them. I love picking them out."

"W-Why are you telling her such absurd stories? And here I thought Onii-san was just a really bad liar, but it was this all along...!"

Azalya winked at him and clapped Kyoko on the shoulder.

The short-haired girl looked up at her in surprise.

"Come on, Kyoko," she said encouragingly, "this isn't anywhere near as bad as when Ryohei challenged a mountain goat to boxing, and it's much better than when he tried parasailing on the highway while boxing."

"True..." Kyoko sniffled. "But Onii-chan..."

"Will be fine," she said firmly. "You'll be fine, won't you?"

"To the extreme," Ryohei shouted jubilantly.

Azalya continued, "Stay with him a bit and talk. You'll feel better. If something goes wrong, text me or Hana. Seiko's freaked out enough, so you may want to leave her be..."

Kyoko nodded and blinked quickly. "T-Thanks, Asa-chan." The tearful girl sniffed and wiped her eyes.

Forcing a smile for the other girl, Azalya guided Tsuna from the room before he could get a word in.

Reborn was waiting for them in the hallway—who knew when he'd left. "How many teeth did Ryohei lose?" Reborn asked without preamble.

"Five," she answered.

"Good."

"'G-Good'!" Tsuna stuttered. "How is that good? What'll he do?"

She flicked him an annoyed look. "They have people called dental surgeons, you know? They can do things like implant fake teeth. And it's good because it fits with my theory about why Namimori students are being attacked."

"Your theory?"

"Mine and Dino's," she amended. "Do you remember when I asked to talk to Reborn a week or so ago? And what I told the two of you?"

Tsuna tapped his chin. "Not really," he admitted. "I didn't really pay attention..."

_What kind of idiot doesn't pay attention to jailbreaks? Especially when there're Mafia criminals on the loose? It's useless to tell him again! _Azalya toyed with her wavy hair, twisting the locks with a finger. It was a habit she thought she'd already broken, but it seemed that quitting smoking had brought a resurgence of old bad habits. "That's all right," she said, which was more an attempt to convince herself than him. "Basically, every victim's been losing one less tooth than the previous one. Every successive victim is also stronger. I'm not sure of the exact order but—"

"But I am certain," Reborn interrupted, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket and handing it to Azalya. "I found this yesterday; it's Ranking Fuuta's list of the strongest Namimori students."

Azalya studied the list carefully. The remaining top names—Kusakabe, Gokudera, Yamamoto, and (surprise!) Hibari—were worrying, but it all made sense. Except... "Why am I not on here?" she demanded sulkily, waving the paper in the air.

Reborn started, "Because you are wea—"

"New!" Tsuna interjected, cutting his tutor off. "You weren't attending Namimori when Fuuta made that list last year."

She considered this suspiciously, but accepted his excuse. There was no guarantee Azalya would have been on the list, but it was better than thinking she was weaker than a bunch of idiots. "You're not on here, either," she commented, which really wasn't a surprise.

Tsuna looked relieved and sighed. "It must not take the Dying Will into account. Thank God."

"But Hayato," Azalya continued, ignoring his obvious cowardice, "is number three and Ya—"

"G-Gokudera-kun is _what_?" he yelped.

"Third."

"He's what!"

"Third. _Daisan_. _Terzo_. And Yama—" **[1]**

Tsuna was already sprinting down the hallway. Actually, his pace was about that of Azalya's jog, since he was such a slow runner.

Azalya watched him go thoughtfully. "So... Tsuna actually cares about his family."

"Of course he does," said Reborn. "By the way, you forgot to tell him about the other parts of your theory, about who is actually attacking these students and for what reason."

Her eyebrows contracted. That was a colossal blunder on her part. It took an effort to admit it without making an excuse. "You're right."

Reborn said, "You should run after him."

"Tsuna's your student," Azalya pointed out.

"He is my student. It's also my nap time."

She deadpanned but left him there and went to go look for Tsuna.

A few minutes later, she found him still in the hospital waiting room, which was packed with Namimori students. He was talking and laughing with Tanaka and looked much more relaxed than he had any right to be. The brunet smiled widely when he saw her approaching.

She raised her eyebrows. "Shouldn't you be calling Hayato or something?"

"It's nothing to worry about anymore. Because Hibari-san's gone after the guys who are doing this."

She _hmm_ed dubiously, and Tanaka jumped in, "Hibari-san's amazing; he can do anything!"

"Yeah, yeah! We're safe now."

What was Hibari to these people, a god?

Azalya pulled Tsuna away from their classmate to a mostly empty spot in the waiting room where they wouldn't be overheard. "Tsuna, I hate to burst your bubble, but you're not safe. These people are criminals—criminals dangerous enough that even the Mafia locked them up." There was actually a lot more explaining than that she had to do, but a very good idea was forming in her mind. And even if Azalya didn't tell him everything, Reborn would. So she finished almost musingly, "This isn't something someone of Kyouya's level can handle."

He stared at her, and there was very real fear in his light brown eyes. "But... I heard the prefects say that Hibari-san already left..."

"Fine, that's fine," she murmured, still thinking quickly. "Kyouya apparently knows where they're hiding, which is something I haven't been able to find out. If it's Kyouya, I'll have a bloody trail of footprints to follow and..."

Tsuna paled. He looked more than a little queasy and very concerned. "You can't seriously be... It's too dangerous."

She actually smiled at him. "Of course not. I'm not stupid enough to fight these guys. Only Kyouya would go without some rudimentary knowledge of their abilities, numbers, etc. So what I'm going to do is simple espionage. Dino will have constant live feed. I'll ask him to redirect it to Reborn."

"But..." Tsuna hedged.

"Don't worry." She patted him on the head. For some reason, Azalya felt like she had to help him, make things easier for him somehow. It was a feeling she'd often had for Dino and her friends but never for the troublesome Vongola heir. Maybe it was the growing realization that he was a good person, albeit a weak one, and guilt at how she'd treated him as a pariah. "I'm going to call for backup. A lot of backup and an ambulance." Her smile shifted to a predatory grin. "And then I'm going to kick that pretentious bastard in the head."

* * *

**Footnotes! For once I ramble about something to do with the story!**

**[1]** "Third" in Japanese and Italian :) I know, I know, they are actually in Japan and should be speaking Japanese from the get-go, but since I'm writing in English...

I also know this is not how things happen in the manga. I condensed it A LOT and left a lot out that should logically follow bits of dialogue in this chapter. This is mostly because Azalya is that kind of character and when I write Ryohei, the plot goes out the window. This chapter was originally longer. Then I cut out lots of Ryohei and dialogue and basically skipped an entire chapter of the manga... XD;I feel like one of those movie producers. The ones who chop off bits of books that the audience really enjoyed and are then killed critically.  
Should I have expanded upon things in this chapter? The loose-ish ends'll be covered later, but... I dunno -_-; Should I have kept to the manga more, or was it all right?  
Why, yes, I am very insecure... -_-; As always, feedback is appreciated and forgiveness is begged for typos :') Thanks for reading!


	6. Precaution and Good Sense

**Chapter 6: Precaution and Good Sense (or Lack Thereof)**

Azalya opened her eyes to darkness. She didn't remember closing them or falling asleep, though it seemed she had. The last thing she remembered was walking into a pitch-black room. It was hard to tell where that memory ended and unconsciousness began. It was hard to focus at all. Her mind was hazy with a drugged sort of detachment. Azalya felt as if she were drifting around some dark void. _Did someone spike the punch? I should get some knuckledusters. Hahaha..._

Sensation and orientation returned slowly to her body. She was sitting propped up against a hard stone wall, the top half of her body resting against the adjacent wall. Her head hurt like hell, almost like an obese gnome was trying to tunnel its way out of her skull as some giant was simultaneously trying to flatten it between invisible palms. Every time she moved her eyes, a dizzying collage of fireworks and sparkles exploded in the darkness, and moving her head made the glittery world turn back flips that would shame an Olympic gymnast.

Azalya tried to speak. "Mmpfll," she managed to groan. Not even close to comprehensible.

"Ah, you've woken?" an unfamiliar voice said from the dark. "I was beginning to wonder if I'd hit you too hard. A comatose prisoner wouldn't do much for me." The speaker was male, probably young, with a voice that was cultured and almost pleasant. "Can you stand?"

_Probably not_, she thought, but what could it hurt to try? Besides her, of course. Azalya concentrated as hard as she could on making her legs obey her and—slowly, painfully—slid herself up the cold, rough wall. The movement made her head spin the way it had the first time she'd ridden a rollercoaster, and she felt just as sick. Her legs trembled with the strain of holding her up even though the wall she leaned against was doing most of the work holding her up.

"Good job," said the voice.

Standing, despite its difficulties, had been a good idea. Her head felt lighter and almost steady as opposed to an unstable chemical compound that could explode at any second. The sparkling pinpricks of lights behind her eyes rearranged themselves when she blinked, aligning briefly to form flashes of color and light that outlined her surroundings. Speech was returning, too. After several tries, her throat and mouth finally decided to cooperate. "_Chi siete_?" **[1]**

There was a giggle—or the demonic offspring of a cross between a chuckle and a giggle—probably at how unoriginal that line was. It'd only been used in every book ever published.

"_Chi siete?_" she croaked again, her head angling in the direction of the sound though her eyes were useless.

"Are you Italian?" The tone of his voice had changed to one with which Azalya was familiar: a mixture between anticipation and triumph. It was the same tone the baseball team captain used with opponents when he knew the game was in the bag but tried not to let it show.

"_Forse_," Azalya said, which was the first thing that came to her mind. With her light brown hair and blue eyes, she obviously wasn't Japanese, but she didn't look like the stereotypical Italian either._ Do I wear red and have a huge nose and a funky mustache and say "Mamma Mia!"? No. What's with these stereotypes, anyways? Do you see what you've done to the Italian image, Nintendo? _**[2]**

"_Come vi chiamate? Lo sapete?_" **[3]**

The Italian sparked something in Azalya's brain, jolting it into almost-working mode. It was funny how two simple questions in her mother tongue could touch off spontaneous recall. Azalya remembered where she was: the abandoned Kokuyo Center's health building; what she'd been doing: simple espionage before it'd evolved into a rather more complicated hostage affair; and what she had to do now: go by the book. All of which were on par with a eureka moment as far as Azalya was concerned.

Figuring she wouldn't get far without humans' most essential sense, Azalya blinked rapidly, fluttering her eyelids constantly until her eyes focused properly on her surroundings.

The source of the voice was a blue-haired young man standing before her. He wore a green Kokuyo Junior High uniform, but that detail only flitted through Azalya's mind. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the conspicuous abnormality on his otherwise plain face: the unique coloration of his eyes. The left iris was a shade lighter than his gelled hair, the right a disconcertingly pupil-less red.

"Do you remember?" he questioned, this time reverting to Japanese. He didn't have an accent. At least not one that Azalya, as a nonnative speaker, could hear.

The girl fought the rising urge to giggle or have an emotional breakdown and bit hard on the inside of her cheek. When she could speak without collapsing into hysterical giggles, she babbled, "Azalya Cavallone. Born December 11, 1991 in Genova, Italia at Saint Mary's Women's Hospital. Blood type AB. I hear that's the least desirable blood type here in Japan. Unpredictable. They don't like that here. And you're one of the criminals that escaped from prison. Are you their leader?"

A brief flash of annoyance at her senseless rambling crossed his face. "I am Rokudo Mukuro. Pleased to meet you."

Azalya's eyebrows contracted involuntarily in suspicious and disbelief, but she nodded indulgently. "The pleasure is, well, not mine. Rokudo Mukuro. Rokudo Mukuro. Why are you attacking Namimori students? Well, I have a couple theories, but I was told most of them are mad paranoia."

"Is that so?" he said smoothly, a small smirk curving his lips. "Would you care to enlighten me, perhaps on the identity of the tenth generation Vongola boss?"

If the lack of a preambulatory clause was calculated to disarm her, it worked. Her heart skipped several beats and resumed at double its normal rate as if to make up for lost time. "Vongola family's Tenth? I'm a Cavallone. You're asking the wrong person. What makes you think I'd know classified information like that?" At the same time she was lying to protect Tsuna, she was thinking bitterly, _Why is it always about the damn Vongola family? Damn Vongola. I don't even like clams, except in clam sauce._

"Please don't play dumb. Azalya is Alfredo Cavallone's youngest and favorite grandchild. I cannot imagine you would be kept in the dark about the affairs of the Vongola Alliance."

Her blood did its best to freeze in her veins at his icy tone, even as her mind took what information he'd revealed and ran with it. This Mukuro knew about her family, even knew she'd been her grandfather's favorite, but he was grossly undereducated in current events—Dino had replaced the ninth generation boss years ago.

"Sorry, I lied. Sorry," she apologized again and shook her head, ostensibly to demonstrate the extent of her repentance. The unnaturally wide sweeping motion of her head gave her eyes a good opportunity to study the room.

Her interrogation chamber was a claustrophobiac's nightmare: small and windowless. It was almost entirely empty. There were two overturned chairs in the far corner that wouldn't work too well as weapons. A chair duel. Honestly. The door was across from her, behind the Mafia-criminal-turned-Kokuyo-student. It was closed and probably locked.

"The Vongola heir, right?" she continued, her blue eyes fixed on the young man's shoulder, past which Azalya could see the door. "That's me." So much for going by the book. Who'd written "the book," anyways?

Mukuro's dark blue eyebrows rose in disbelief.

Azalya smiled, nodded, and kicked him in the crotch.

Mukuro squawked and folded, curling into a ball as he hit the ground.

Azalya dashed the two meters to the door, stepping on Mukuro's side in the process. She jimmied her student ID between the door and the doorjamb, glancing back at the fallen young man as she threw her weight against the door repeatedly. The door popped opened on her fourth try, and Azalya stumbled out into a narrow hallway, nearly crashing into the opposite wall.

Her head snapped quickly in both directions, and she scanned the stretch of nondescript office building hallway before choosing to go left. The good thing about buildings is that they generally have exit signs. The good thing about exit signs is that they almost always lead to an exit. Azalya made the obvious decision to follow the neon green road. The escaping man suited her situation perfectly.

Azalya's legs wanted to collapse. Her right shoulder throbbed from forcing open the door, and her head was ready to drop right off her shoulders and roll to paradise, with or without the Messiah. But of the few options Azalya had left, she preferred the one where she was alive in the end. So she ignored the warning signs from her body and lurched down the hall as quickly as her jelly-legs would take her, sending quick looks over her shoulder ever few paces.

It was the funniest thing, but the sign and the door to what she hoped was the outside didn't seem to be getting closer. Her vision went wonky but not in the usual spinning-swimming way. The bare walls of the hallways distorted, then disappeared altogether as she focused on the green sign. Then that dissolved away, too, and she was staring into Mukuro's smirking face.

Dread, but not surprise, spilled into her veins in place of adrenaline. She stiffened when he took the first step toward her, eyes flicking between his face and the far-reaching weapon he held.

"The hard thing," he said, running his hand along the polished wood of his trident, "with concussed brains is they keep forgetting the illusion they were shown." His contrasting-colored eyes slid from the ornate trident head to her chest as if contemplating how much force he would need to run her through. "You've made an interesting test case."

"An illusion. I knew it." It was hard to sound confident and self-assured, but Azalya managed to control her tone all the same.

He came to a halt at her bold declaration, looking intrigued. His long fingers glided over his pale cheek in a pensive motion. "Did you, now?"

"Yeah, I did. You aren't Rokudo Mukuro. You aren't even real."

Comprehension dawned on his face. It was more expressive than Azalya would have suspected. Perhaps he only kept it guarded for the important moments. "I take it you've met Rokudo Mukuro—the _fake_ Rokudo Mukuro—before?"

"Fake?" she asked in spite of herself, starting to back away. The heel of her left sneaker hit the wall behind her. Cornered. Out of ideas. She should have stuck to the book. Azalya flattened herself against the wall, careful not to bump her throbbing head, and raised her hands. "Wait." Her voice came out too breathless, too fearful. She needed to sound confident, intelligent, like she had a chance of surviving this encounter. "You don't know who the Vongola heir is, right?"

A long pause. "That is correct."

"But you knew he was in Japan, in Namimori, attending Namimori Junior High?"

Mukuro tilted his head to the side, gesturing for her to continue with her line of reasoning. From the way the muscles around his mouth tensed, she knew he was fighting a smirk.

"So, I want to ask: Who told you? Who broke _omertà_? And did she help you escape from the 'Iron Walls' as well?"

Mukuro laughed that trademarked creepy laugh of his. "You are a clever girl, but you are not quite clever enough. If anyone could prove the guilt of this person you have in mind, it would be a different matter, but even the Mafia does not accept a criminal's testimony in court."

Azalya read the implication in his words and said, "I am not bargaining with you." But her voice wavered uncertainly. She frowned and tried to look extra stern to make up for it. If he thought she could be bought for information, he would never stop trying.

The blue-haired youth gave her the most insincere of smiles. "I've offered nothing that hasn't been accepted."

Azalya opened her mouth to give a definite "no," but the part of her mind that was always second-guessing her decisions froze the word on her tongue. On the one hand, telling Mukuro that Tsuna was slated for the Vongola Boss's position was out of the question, a blatant violation of the Code. On the other, if her suspicions were correct—and they generally tended toward right on the money or far overreaching—here was a golden opportunity to oust Chiara. _If_ she gave Mukuro a free pass out of trouble.

Rokudo Mukuro had committed far too many crimes against the Mafia itself to be easily forgiven, one of the reasons his escape from Vendicare Prison was unfeasible if unaided from the outside. His unlikely success and subsequent knowledge was, as the world's most annoying older brother would have put it, improbable to the extreme. Chiara had a long history of instigation. It would be just like her to set rabid wolves free and point them in Tsuna's direction. But as perfectly logical as it was to suspect foul play, a small part of Azalya knew she only wanted Chiara connected to this mess so she could destroy Dino's opponent.

_It's not worth it_, the pragmatic part of her mind warned. _Not even Dino would forgive you for selling Tsuna out_. YOU_ wouldn't forgive yourself._

Chiara was less trouble than what Mukuro could do. Azalya's gut instinct told her the criminal had endless potential for wreaking havoc if he weren't stopped. It was Azalya's duty, if not within her capabilities, to prevent the chaos he would bring. At times like these, she almost felt proud to be a Mafioso.

Mukuro gave her another minute to consider before he sighed through his nose, making a sound like a disappointed teacher. "I see you are just as unwilling to betray your beloved Mafia code."

She'd just decided herself but announced with conviction, "I'm not so cowardly to sell out a fellow Mafioso."

"You would rather die, is that it?"

Her human survival instinct wanted her to wail and plead until he let her go, but her deeply ingrained sense of Mafia pride and honor wouldn't allow it. "Who said anything about dying?" she challenged quietly.

"No one," he admitted. "I have other uses for you, what good luck—or perhaps bad from your perspective." Without another word, he lunged, bringing his trident up and around in a rapid swipe.

She could barely move fast enough to evade it. Even on a good day, Mukuro moved at a speed she couldn't hope to match for long. The leftmost blade nicked the back of her elbow. It was less than a even a paper cut, but the young man didn't follow up while Azalya was off balance. He pulled back instead, looking as pleased as if he'd already succeeded in carving out her heart. Then he dropped his trident, letting it clatter unceremoniously, and pulled out a revolver.

Moving the grace and ease of years of experience, Azalya yanked her own firearm from its holster and pointed the muzzle at Mukuro's head. Where his own gun was directed. Which made no sense.

Mukuro pulled the trigger just as she registered that fact.

The explosion of blood was the last thing she saw before darkness took over the universe. And then things got interesting.

* * *

**Whoo-hoo! Isn't Italian awesome?**

**[1]** Who are you?**  
[2] **Maybe**  
[3] **What is your name? Do you know?

Yay, Italian! A big thank you to Sorgiva for helping me with that ^o^/ Thanks!  
Yeah, I'm naming Dino's family members after Ferrari-related things. I mean, come on... Dino and Enzo... Amano-sensei did it too! So I have no naming sense. D= And Azalya is completely not an Italian name, but there's a story behind that.

As a side note, I've realized that although one of the genres for this story is romance... this hasn't been much of a romance! It probably will continue like this barring any strike of romantic inspiration (unlikely) or... yeah, it's not going to be ultra romantic although there will be some liking/crushes. Just to let you know... ^-^;

Did no one besides me find it odd that Mukuro knew all this current events stuff, like there being a new 10th boss, and that Tsuna was in Namimori without knowing who Tsuna was? I mean, that was rather convenient. Not to mention Dino brought, like, 50-100 subordinates to Japan that were standing around the Sawada house, so THEY know. Gokudera and Bianchi both and other random characters found out about Tsuna. _Longchamp_ the idiot knew. WHY did Mukuro have to go through all that trouble? It just doesn't make sense unless...  
Unless there were someone pulling the strings! And so now there is a "direct relationship" (as Aza believes) between the Vongola's problems and the Cavallone's more important (as Aza believes) problems. Manga plot holes and rants aside, it's been a LONG time since I updated. Was it worth the wait? Was it an absolute phail?  
Thanks for the feedback up till this point and please continue (or start!) with it.


	7. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate

**Need an Excuse (Again)? I've got plenty to spare!**

First off, I'd like to excuse my absence. I blame the college app process. If you're in high school, I advise you to look out for senior year. If you're a senior, I commend you for being good enough at time management to have time to read this.

It's not my fault for being lazy. Definitely not.

On the bright side, this chapter is longer than the others :)

* * *

**Chapter 7: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate [1]**

Azalya had never been the type to worry about what followed death. Her family had raised her Catholic, and the verity of what she'd been taught about Heaven and Hell had never been among her chief concerns. The girl had enough trouble sorting out her problems in the corporeal world as it was, and any sort of introspection in the vertical direction would only have made them worse.

But now, it was plenty relevant for her to worry. Was she dead? Probably. Why was she always waking up thinking she'd died? That couldn't be healthy. Mentally. A dead person is already as physically unhealthy as possible.

"Don't worry, nee-chan," a somber child's voice said from somewhere above her, "you aren't dead yet."

Azalya, in accordance with her personality, took that to mean that her death was near-at-hand. She was, after all, at a complete disadvantage against Mukuro, the poster child of the criminally insane. Captured and held hostage—it was a real landmark moment in Azalya's career. Chiara would be having a ball back in Italy.

"Nee-chan?"

"_Fratellino_-kun?"**[2]**

The boy giggled. "Nee-chan."

Azalya sighed deeply and opened her eyes. Her first thought was that someone had painted her into a world of abstract art. The very air around her was a multicolored sludge, swirling around her head and shifting through the spectrum at a dizzying rate. The effect was sufficient to make a weaker stomach throw up.

"Give me a break," she moaned. "Not another illusion?"

"I don't think so. I've been here for a while now."

Azalya turned her head toward the voice. The speaker was a boy, kneeling by her side, close enough to observe and far enough to run if she meant him harm. He was primary school-aged and had the unremarkably cute looks of a boy next door in training. Despite the hot summer weather, he had a striped scarf draped around his neck.

"Fuuta Della Stella?" she guessed, wondering where the ornate tome the ranking boy always lugged around with him was.

His large brown eyes studied her morosely. "You know me? Were you a client?"

It was understandable that he wouldn't remember every face that solicited his rankings. He probably had more people after him than celebrities had paparazzi. "Last winter I paid eight million euros for the ranking of the mafia families most likely to ally with Chiara Pazzo," she reminded him. "My name is Azalya Cavallone."

His young face brightened for a moment as he exclaimed, "Oh! I remember. Aza-nee is ranked number—" Fuuta broke off and shook his head violently. "No, I shouldn't give rankings," he murmured to himself. "Don't think about rankings."

_Rankings..._ The realization hit her so hard that Azalya didn't know how she could have missed the connection. She struggled to her feet and began pacing in a wide circle around her fellow captive. _He must know Fuuta's connection to Tsuna. Was it Chiara? No, Fuuta's ranking abilities alone would've made him a target. Then why keep him hostage? Was it really Chiara? Am I just paranoid?_

"Aza-nee," Fuuta interjected sadly, "I'm getting dizzy from your circles."

"I hate circular thinking, too," she replied bitterly.

"What's circular thinking?"

"It's nothing helpful," she sighed, sitting down again next to the boy. "Just something I do. It happens, rather; I don't do it on purpose. No one does."

"Oh..."

"More importantly, were you captured by Mukuro?" she questioned. "Does anyone in Italy know you've disappeared? You have so many safe houses..."

"My mother might have noticed by now," Fuuta said hopefully. "She makes me call her every three days, and it's been"—he ticked off the days on his fingers—"ten days already."

"You've been here ten days?" Azalya asked, slightly horrified. There was little hope if Ranking Fuuta didn't know how to escape. The ten-year-old informant was notorious for being a slippery fish.

"Nine," Fuuta corrected. "They asked me a bunch of questions the day they caught me and then..."

"Did he want you to tell him the Vongola heir's identity?"

Fuuta flinched. "I didn't tell him, though, honest! I wouldn't ever betray Tsuna-nii. That's why he took the ranking I made last year of the strongest students in Namimori. Tsuna-nii is safe, right? He was at the very bottom of the list."

_At the very bottom... Sawada Tsunayoshi, you have some explaining to do._ Azalya almost sighed in exasperation at how weak the future Mafia boss was. She archived that quote in the back shelves of her mind; it was a good weapon against Tsuna if she ever decided to confront Dino again about his backing the useless teen. If Tsuna were truly worthy of inheriting the Vongola family, he'd at least put effort into capturing the Kokuyo Gang. Twenty-three people had already been beaten up for No Good Tsuna. "Mukuro is using the list to locate Tsuna's family," she speculated. "Hayato and Yamamoto-kun were on the list, after all."

"Un, that's true. Did Nee-chan's deductive skill ranking improve? If I had my book, I could... never mind."

His statement reminded Azalya of her earlier confusion. "You didn't lose your book, did you?" she asked neutrally.

"I hid it," Fuuta said sadly. "I didn't want them to get my book. There's a lot of information in it. I didn't want it to do more damage."

"Of course." She petted him on the head lightly and smiled when the anxious boy stared at her with doe eyes. "You don't have to feel guilty about it, Fuuta. We won't talk about rankings, since it bothers you. Can you tell me about this"—she gestured at the corrupted rainbow that surrounded them—"chaos instead?"

Fuuta's light brown eyes filled with a mixture of solemnity and excitement. "We're inside his mind!" he declared proudly. "We're inside his mind, and he's inside ours."

"No kidding," she said in a hushed, awed voice. She would have whistled if she knew how. "Can he hear us?"

"No," Fuuta said with an unconvincingly tone of reassurance.

Azalya jerked around, imagining Mukuro's annoying pineapple head would pop out of the ground. It didn't, which left Azalya almost disappointed; the cathartic act of stomping in his head into goop would surely help their situation in some way. "Seems like he missed his cue." She folded her arms across her chest and forced some of the tension from her face before turning to face Fuuta.

And of course, in the cute young boy's place was a teenager with a bad hairstyle and a manically smug mien. "Enter Rokudo Mukuro," the criminal said in a stage whisper. "Cue dramatic music and terrified screams."

Many girls, when frightfully menaced, were capable of producing shrieks so bloodcurdling that they were reserved for only the highest budget horror movies. Others froze so completely that they may have been wax statues for all anyone could tell. Azalya was one of the few whose instinctive reaction generally increased her chances of survival. Her mind hadn't even processed the fact that Mukuro was standing in front of her and its consequences before her hand automatically reached for and pulled out her gun. Her slim index finger was tightening on the trigger when the gun spontaneously translated from her hand to Mukuro's.

"Not so fast." The blue-haired youth giggled chillingly. "Didn't the tight-lipped ranking brat tell you? This is my mindspace."

Her weary eyes flicked between her empty, outstretched hand and the weapon in Mukuro's as her brain worked out what had happened. "Let me guess: your mind, your reality, under your control," she said in as condescending of a manner as she could manage, struggling to keep her fear from showing.

"Please," he said in a tone of faux modesty, "the entire universe operates according to my will."

Azalya searched through her pockets indiscreetly for something she could use as a weapon. Predictably, she found nothing. "Where is Fuuta? Was he just one of your illusions?"

"What a suspicious individual. I simply had a job for the ranking kid, so he earned a brief reprise. Speaking of which, thank you for a job well done." His voice was full of irony.

Azalya's heart sank. There was a gleam in his eye that she liked even less than the rest of his look. It was the kind of vainglory that only preceded a declaration of absolute success. "You've discovered Vongola Decimo's identity," she guessed.

"Kufufufu," Mukuro giggled. "Of course, I have. Sawada Tsunayoshi-kun, isn't it? You as good as told me. And, Tsuna, that's such an odd nickname." He smirked at her shocked, despairing face. "My mindspace," he reminded her.

Azalya gave herself over to a brief moment of self-contempt and degradation, stepping willingly into the dark emo corner. It was almost a relief to leave the sickeningly kaleidoscopic world for the colorless depression of the emo corner. _Pathetic_, she scolded herself, _you're absolutely pathetic; you're acting like a baby. If you made a problem, then you fix it!_

Mukuro appraised her with detached amusement, the way one might watch a mildly interesting sitcom. He didn't look remotely concerned.

Nothing bothered Azalya more than not being taken seriously. It was the unfortunate side effect of being the youngest in the family and the direct result of being a female. She'd spent years building up a solid reputation in the underworld. Of course, Mukuro, recently sprung from prison, wouldn't have known that.

The skinny young man yawned, which was the greatest insult yet. "If you want to play," he commented, "you're going to have to make this fight much more interesting than a staring contest. I thought you might be more entertaining."

Azalya snorted. Oh, she'd let him down proper. "I'm not the type to jump through hoops while held at gunpoint."

"Oh? Then I will have to entertain myself with the tenth generation boss. I have a different purpose for you."

Azalya blinked. She was no longer looking into Mukuro's repulsive face. The odd universe inside his mind had disappeared. That wasn't a bad thing, necessarily, but she doubted he'd freed her from Hell on goodwill alone. Whatever "purpose" he had for her wouldn't be pretty.

"Why do I put myself through this?" Azalya wondered aloud as she studied the neglected garden that surrounded her. It was sun-drenched and overgrown, and dry weeds had won the fight for dominance against whatever flowers had been cultivated in the past. A little ways off was a creepy-looking woods. "Pride," she answered herself distastefully. "Hubris? Maybe not to that extent."

"Do you have time to worry about such stupid things in the face of an enemy?" The man's deep voice came from the area of the stunted, feeble-looking tree. It should have startled her at the very least, but all she felt was a little relief that she wasn't stuck in such a dismal place alone. Maybe Yamamoto was rubbing off on her.

Azalya picked her way carefully across the tangle of weeds and bushes, ripping her jeans when the stained and frayed cloth caught on thorns. She winced when they scratched her legs and wiped away the trickles of blood. By the time Azalya made it to the dying tree, her jeans were "fashionably" destroyed, and her ankles and calves looked like subway maps had been drawn on them in red ink.

There was a man resting on what must have been a truly uncomfortable a bed of weeds and thorns. He had slick, spiked-up black hair that accented his angular face. The distinctively tattooed countenance was the same one that had glared at her from police mug shots. "Rokudo Mukuro?" she asked suspiciously. "Or are you the decoy?"

The recumbent man sat up and stood in a obtrusive motion meant to convey strength and dominance. "I'm just a fake," he announced with a willingness for submission that contrasted his demeanor. "I'm nothing but his shadow warrior."

"Oh, I see," she said politely. Azalya didn't know if he was telling the truth. She wasn't one to trust easily, and her recent experiences with illusions had left her even more cautious than before. When the silence between them stretched on too long, she nodded as though she had accepted his claim and held out her hand. "It's so nice to meet a fellow puppet. Are you a willing one?"

His eyes were dark, accusing, and strangely empathetic. "Why is there blood on your hands?"

Azalya smiled hesitantly. "I cut my legs," she suggested.

The tall criminal still looked suspicious, but he grasped her hand and turned it over as if he would find dried blood under her fingernails. "Is that all?"

"Not quite," she admitted.

His grip tightened painfully until Azalya thought she could feel her hand collapsing. "Don't," he cautioned her, "think that blood will ever wash out."

Azalya lowered her gaze and her sharp blue eyes fell on the bulky engraved ring that adorned the man's finger. She recognized the ornate snake design immediately as the crest of the Crolato Family. But that entire mafia family had been massacred five years ago. It was the largest unsolved crime in Northern Italy, a famous cold case. "Are you...?" She used her left hand to indicate the ring, leaving the question open-ended.

He dropped her hand quickly and shoved his into the pockets of his tight black leather pants. "I am Rokudo Mukuro's shadow," the mysterious man said bitterly.

Azalya rubbed her knuckles thoughtfully. "Who were you before that?"

"I was once known as Lanchia," he spat with a black glower that Azalya knew was for the real Mukuro, "the strongest man in Northern Italy, a traitor to my family. I slaughtered them," he revealed, "each one of my comrades. He used me as a tool to murder the kind family that had taken both of us orphans in!"

Azalya's initial instinct was to comfort the older ex-mafioso, but she also knew nothing could assuage his guilt. The atrocities he'd committed were the kind that you had to forgive yourself for before repenting, and it was obvious that Lanchia's desire for absolution had been sidelined by his hatred toward Mukuro. "Did he use his damned illusions to trick you?" she asked, perhaps tactlessly.

Lanchia glared at her silently for a full minute before letting out a harsh bark of laughter. "Illusions! Those are toys to him. Rokudo Mukuro's deadly ability"—He leaned in close to her and lowered his voice like they were co-conspirators sharing a secret"—is mind control."

"Mind control?" Azalya repeated incredulously, stepping away from the distressed man in disbelief. She wiped the sweat beading on her forehead. "How can that be possible?"

"If anyone knew, no one would fall under his spell. His control... it is impossible to break."

She rubbed her eyes because she felt hopelessness welling up in them. She tried not to think about what he may have used her to do. "Doesn't that make him far too powerful?"

"He is that."

"I don't suppose you would be willing to help me kill him."

"It's impossible. Once the bastard has captured you, his control is continuous. I know from experience. I cannot kill myself, much less _him._ I have not a shred free will left; neither do you."

Her battered spirit sank a little lower at his depressing declaration, but Azalya recovered herself quickly, as always. "As far as I can tell, Rokudo Mukuro is the type of odious man that enjoys a challenge. He may have stopped you from committing suicide, but if we were to try to kill him... I can almost imagine that he would _encourage_ it." When he didn't accept her offer, she continued pitifully, "Please. I've already endangered my friends by revealing something I shouldn't have. The only way I can make up for that is by killing him before he can act."

Lanchia sighed loudly, but there was more willpower in his eyes than before. "Maybe it could work," he conceded. "If I die," he added to make his meaning clear, "I could be redeemed. Maybe I'll go to the same place as my old boss." This notion seemed to comfort him. He almost smiled, but then his facial muscles tensed and his entire body went rigid.

"When I said I had a purpose for you, I didn't mean plotting my murder," Mukuro's cool, sepulchral voice said from behind her. It sent send shivers up her spine. Cold sweat ran down the side of her face.

She turned slowly and said, "You seem to like sneaking up on people."

The illusionist and puppet-master smirked at her bravado. "An effective skill, wouldn't you say?"

Lanchia growled. The ferocious sound only made Mukuro's twisted smile expand until it became a sneer. Then the growling petered out, and Azalya heard the rustling thuds of Lanchia's footsteps instead.

"What are you doing?" she whispered, staring at him as he marched past her.

Her accomplice didn't even glance at her, but the dead look in his black eyes answered for him.

"Uh-oh." Azalya watched him pass Mukuro, who still wore his narcissistic sneer, and fade into the forest that bordered the overgrown mess. "Is that an example of your mind control?" Azalya demanded.

"Lanchia-san has obligations elsewhere," Mukuro said lightly. "If you are still interested in killing me, do by all means continue. It is _exactly_ the kind of amusement I was told to expect from you."

Azalya's long fingers curled around the grip of her unique gun, but she didn't unholster her weapon. "Told by whom?" she croaked.

"Hmm... Whom indeed, I wonder?" He taunted, "You betrayed Sawada Tsunayoshi in the end, but didn't learn who betrayed the Mafia. You should have accepted my offer to exchange secrets. I'm sure that's what you are thinking now."

"There is more to me than secrets," she said, attempting to match his lofty tone.

Mukuro raised his eyebrows at her defiance. "What an unexpectedly good bargaining position. Unfortunately, you didn't choose the best time to begin amusing me; rest assured, I will take my time enjoying whatever absurd plan you have convinced Lanchia to follow after I have Sawada Tsunayoshi under my control. Now, I did say you had a purpose. Lanchia has gone to intercept your former comrades. Go," he enjoined, "lend a hand." And lest she misunderstand, he added with yet another _Fufufufu_, "To Lanchia, that is."

* * *

**Translation Notes =D**

**[1]** "All abandon hope, ye who enter in." It's written above the door to Hell. Make of that what you will :3 From Dante's _Divine Comedy_! Definitely a great read, unless you don't like epic poetry. Then you can read... something else. Yes, I'm a nerd, and I enjoy reading epic poetry... Don't judge me D:

**[2] **Little brother  
Note: I'm pretty sure people don't go around calling other people fratellino in Italy. She's making fun of the fact that Fuuta calls her Nee-chan. If they do... Well... then never mind XD

**Because I Love Random Ranting**

Why is Mukuro saying his order to Azalya out loud when he very obviously doesn't need to? Well, why do fighters in shounen manga scream out the names of their attacks? So the reader knows what's going on :) And to sound cool.  
I've tried to keep it short this time. How can I talk so much about random crap? I should have a blog so I can confine my rants to their proper place. Sorry. Really. Thank you, by the way, for pointing out my ranting problem.

**Q & A** (I can't write a good ampersand to save my life)

Maybe I should have mentioned this at the beginning or somewhere in the actual stories... Azalya is 14, born in late 1991, so it's around mid-2006 right now. Probably late June/early July. Why don't I know the timeline of my own story? I have a vague idea, only. Well, just know that we're in Summer and coming upon summer vacation. It is, for my convenience, different from the manga. I've tried to stick as closely to the original story as possible in everything else. :)

Thanks so much for reading/faving/subscribing/reviewing! Again, I apologize for my sporadic (-cough- nonexistent -cough-) updating recently, and I'll try to stick closer to a schedule. Does anyone have any suggestions? I appreciate all the feedback you've given so far!


	8. Explosions to Clear the Air

In case you don't read my other stories, I've decided to do recapitulations! Because, quote from TFS: "Because, let's face facts… I'll never keep a schedule." Truest words ever written. But if you haven't read the last chapter, I recommend you do so, because the recap is really meant to be a refresher and not a substitute :)

**Recap: **_Capture and controlled, Azalya's not exactly having a ball. She does make some new acquaintances, however, as two new characters join our happy famiglia. The adorable Fuuta and less adorable Lanchia bring Azalya doubts and suspicions rather than flowers, and Mukuro gives her the worst gift of all: an order to attack Tsuna and co._

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 8: Explosions to Clear the Air**

"There is no denying truth," the ominous, implacable voice asserted. "You have committed crimes against the Vongola Family."

Azalya offered the same controlled answer she had to every other allegation: "I didn't, not consciously, not willingly." A confident tone arose out of the tangled emotions of fear, anger, and confusion.

But she understood the Vindice's induction. What else was she supposed to assume when the Vindice had her in chains and her last coherent memory was an order to attack Tsuna? She had to pretend, though, believe in her innocence. Or they would lock her in Vendicare forever, and that was a place every sane mafioso feared.

From her precarious position, she gazed defiantly at the fisheye bulges in the bandages that swathed the interrogator's head. A dangerous urge to tear the strips off white cloth away from his face surged in her, but Azalya only fisted her shackled hands. The chain links clattered against each other, their muted calls adding to the heavy atmosphere.

"There are other unwitting allies of Rokudo Mukuro's you've taken," she contested. "Lanchia and Fuuta were also controlled. There may be more."

The towering man was bent over her, using his superior height as a last blow to her pride. But he didn't contradict her. Maybe he was reconsidering her arrest. More likely he was debating a death sentence.

Azalya counted ninety seconds of dead air, so to speak, before the man reacted by sweeping out of her little holding cell, like a broom that took away the traces of positive energy. Before she could sort through her thoughts for a better defense, a second inquisitor—or perhaps the same one?—strutted in. Standing behind him in the open threshold was the last person Azalya wanted to see her in this humiliating situation.

Dino.

When their eyes met, she felt like someone had force fed her the bitterest pill. Lowering her gaze, Azalya saw that the thwarted interrogator had unlocked the chains that bound her to the uncomfortable chair. They clanked to the floor in coils when she lifted herself up gingerly.

"We've confirmed your story," the bandaged man growled, obviously displeased. "You may go."

"Thanks for your understanding." She glowered at the Vindice agent while hobbling out of the cell, less out of anger than reluctance to see Dino's disappointment.

Dino stood back from the reinforced door, taking Azalya by the arm as she passed to steady her. "Ambulance's waiting," Dino told her.

She stopped walking because each step was sending paroxysms of pain through her legs and into her head. Still, she protested, "I don't need—"

Dino's sigh interrupted her. "Azalya, you're injured. The ambulance is waiting."

"Right," she said. Furious at her weakness, she knew the short concession sounded harshly ungrateful. "I understand."

* * *

Hospitals made Azalya nervous. Not because she hated shots, not because her grandparents had died under a doctor's care, not for any typical reason a teenager would fear hospitals. It was purely a mafioso's instinct, an aversion to an easily accessible location that could be her grave.

"Don't be melodramatic," Dino laughed. "You'll be all right. I thought the hospital was a bad idea, too, at first. Did you know Namimori Central Hospital is affiliated with Kyouya? Well, more like indebted to him."

Unconvinced, Azalya shifted on the standard uncomfortable hospital bed, sitting up to better inspect the room. Her diligent scrutiny of the opposite wall was to avoid looking too pitifully at Dino in the chair beside her bed. She focused on the heavy pleated curtains. They could have hidden a diminutive assassin. "And?"

"Lie down, Aza. Didn't I say you'll be fine? They treat the... unorthodox patients pretty well here. I brought this, though, 'cause I know my paranoid cousin." Grinning, he pulled a handgun from one of the many pockets of his baggy cargos and flipped it into her lap.

The small caliber gun was hers, the Russian prototype that had cost her an arm and leg to procure. The one she'd lost somewhere in Kokuyo Land. "Thank you," she murmured, slipping the black gun beneath her pillow lest a nurse barge in and see it. Then, unable to hold it in any longer, she turned to face her older cousin and blurted, "I'm sorry."

The young boss lounged in the plastic chair with his arms over the intricate print on his black t-shirt. His posture and expression would have seemed entirely relaxed to an outsider, but Azalya could identify the tension around his eyes and mouth. He arched a pale, skinny eyebrow. "What about?"

"Failing."

Dino was silent. He unfolded his arms, rested them on the scratched plastic armrests, and watched her fidget.

Finally, she posed her customary post-screw up question, "Are you angry?"

Dino scooted his chair closer and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Not with you. I just wonder how you could have considered such a _gukyo_." **[1]**

She avoided his eyes. It wasn't like Dino to add insult to injury. "_Gukyo_?"

"_Baka na_ _koto_," Dino rephrased. **[2]**

"I... You never explicitly ordered..." Failing to put together a plausible excuse, Azalya fell silent.

In a serious tone that revealed exactly how stupid Dino thought her, he said, "I'd have stopped you if I'd realized what you were thinking outside Kokuyo Land. There must have been some interference with our camera. I couldn't see a thing or reach you. But Reborn told me everything."

"How much is everything?" She forced a smile when Dino laughed. She hadn't intended to sound funny or cliché, but his amusement was a definite improvement from exasperation.

"Everything from when they went in to when the Vindice took you. Tell me what you did, Aza. Tell me _why_."

Azalya shrugged and ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. She'd been afraid of that, of coming up with an answer that wasn't a lie. After a deep breath, the girl began, "I tracked Kyouya to Kokuyo Land."

Leaning forward in his seat, Dino nodded for her to go on.

"I noticed our line stopped working, so I thought it had to be suspicious. When I confirmed Kokuyo Land was Rokudo Mukuro's base, I texted the coordinates to Reborn. And... I went after Mukuro. Alone."

"Because?" Dino prompted.

She couldn't tell him the truth: that she hadn't trusted Tsuna, that she'd gotten fed up with kowtowing to the Vongola. Instead, Azalya told the blond mafia boss, "Mukuro was connected with Chiara somehow. I think she instigated his escape. I think she told him about Ranking Fuuta. I think she set him on Tsuna's tail."

Now Dino's calm façade fell. Surprise and dread widened his pale brown eyes. Dino sounded every bit the Cavallone boss when he ordered, "Explain."

Several seconds elapsed while she outlined a speech for Dino's easy comprehension. _Rhetorical triangle: ethos, pathos, logos_, she reminded herself. "The chance of Mukuro's party escaping from Vendicare without help is one to a million. He might have been able to free himself, but so many prisoners at once? Not possible. We saw the 'Iron Walls'' insane security last year, remember?"

"I remember. The mass breakout was unlikely, but not impossible. You didn't think Tsuna would be able to defeat Mukuro, either."

Azalya didn't linger on Dino's rebuttal, mostly because it was true, and moved directly into her next argument. "I spoke with Mukuro. He revealed some... dubious information: Mukuro thought Grandfather was leading our family still."

Although this information seemed to interest him, Dino pointed out, "But Rokudo Mukuro had been in Vendicare for years; I'd be more concerned if he knew the Mafia's affairs."

His logic brought a triumphant smile to Azalya's tanned face. "He did, Dino. He knew the business of the Vongola's succession. He knew about Fuuta Della Stella relationship with Tsuna. He knew to look in Namimori."

Dino drew in a sharp breath. "Coincidence?" he suggested without conviction. He followed her reasoning, which only made sense, after all. "I don't doubt foul play, but why suspect Chiara? Dozens of people have the same information."

"There's the snag," Azalya admitted. "Though Chiara's the only one with the motivation; she wanted Tsuna disproven or out of Xanxus' way." _Or maybe we have more trouble on our hands than I first thought._

"From what Reborn has told me," Dino said, "Mukuro's objective was to avenge himself upon the mafia. He wanted to destroy it and the world. That doesn't jibe with Chiara's. Besides, she's calmed down recently." He sounded just as naïve as she knew him to be, just as naïve as he'd been four years ago on his first day as their boss.

"So they played each other—and they both failed." Frustration from Dino's unwillingness to entertain her suspicions slipped into her voice. "You said Chiara's being quiet, but she's either calculating her evil plans or executing them; she's never 'quiet.' Whether she wreaks havoc in our family or out in the world, Chiara thrives on chaos."

Dino's thin lips twitched in amusement. Her dramatic assertion didn't allow for a true smile. "Are we discussing Chiara Pazzo or evil incarnate?"

Azalya flushed lightly. "Dino! Don't tease. I'm worried about this. Chiara is dangerous," she concluded. There was much less bite in her voice than necessary; she couldn't muster venom in face of his levity.

"I know she is."

She tried again to convince him of Chiara's treachery and appealed, "She'd do anything to unseat you, Dino. Cheating, lying, scheming: dirty tricks unpalatable to honorable Mafiosi. If you would just look over your shoulder, you would see Chiara at your back with a gun."

Dino replied with an unaffected confidence that left Azalya speechless: "I don't need to look over my shoulder because I have you behind me."

Azalya bit her lip, wishing she had the heart to contradict her cousin, her _boss_. His frequent displays of familial love couldn't change their relationship as Mafia boss and subordinate. From an objective point of view, Dino could become the ideal boss, charismatic and sensible, were his characteristic naiveté shattered. And the Cavallone stood only to benefit from a hardened boss.

The family came first and foremost in their lives—before hate and certainly before love. The family _was _their life. They'd been raised on that fundamental principle, but Azalya was finding it increasing difficult to live by. She'd thought herself mentally and emotionally stronger than Dino, strong enough to sacrifice personal sentiments for the family's sake. She wasn't.

_I'll walk after him for eternity if I have to_, Azalya avowed silently. If she couldn't fulfill her duty to the family, she would ensure that it wouldn't suffer from her weakness. And all she could do was nag him with her worries and suspicions. The role was far from glorious, but it was one she stepped into easily, almost as though it'd been created with her paranoid nature in mind. In accordance with her new resolution, she persisted, "Look into it, will you?"

"I will, Aza. Thanks for telling me." Before Azalya could respond, he surprised her with the sharp intelligence that he usually hide beneath layers of comical clumsiness. "Now that we've cleared that up, let's get back to the real issue: why did you confront Mukuro alone?"

The brunette winced. Her bid for distraction had failed, and now she wanted to lie. But Dino had given her open honesty, as was his way, and it was a favor she always felt obliged to return. Despite a foreboding sensation in her stomach that warned her against tainting the recently cleared atmosphere, Azalya revealed shamefully, "I wanted in. I've been here for three months with nothing to do but babysit Sawada Tsunayoshi. The most action-intensive thing I've done since coming to Japan is join the school baseball team."

"I need you in Japan," he stated. "It's not just babysitting, though I wouldn't trust that to anyone else, either. You can help Tsuna adjust to his life in the mafia. It's hard, Aza. It was hard for you, even if you won't admit it. It was hard for me, and I'd known about it all for years before I even began training with Reborn. The mafia is still new to Tsuna."

"That's the_ Vongola _Family's problem," she argued, unable to contain her bitterness. Whether it was a problem of teenage mood swings, genuine hate, or jealousy, Azalya just couldn't accept subservience to most powerful mafia family. Not graciously, at least. "What does it have to do with me?"

"Think about it from Tsuna's perspective: he's only been exposed to the negative. Hayato is well-intentioned, but you know how unreceptive Tsuna is. And Reborn... Well, he doesn't indulge in what he calls 'soft techniques' of assimilation. Introduce him to our world, Aza, the parts of our world Tsuna won't be afraid of." He was appealing to her better nature instead of just issuing a command. It wasn't a courtesy Dino offered often or to just anyone, and it was that willingness to forgo his authority that placated Azalya.

She sighed, hating that Dino was right. Whining and complaining was nothing but immature, not to mention mutinous. Her grandfather would be turning over in his grave to hear her thoughts today. She sighed again, resignedly. "I get it. I need to stay in Japan. I guess it's not bad being so far-removed from the mafia." And when she thought about her life in Japan—the school, the food, the _friends—_she realized the truth. Her currently assignment and its implications of childcare aggravated her only ostensibly. Temper gone, she stammered, "I-I should thank you for this. It's completely different from Italy, so I did hate it at first. But I've made friends here, even got asked to join a sports team. That never would've happened at La Scuola Privata di Maralleno." **[3]**

He looked relieved that she'd backed down. "That concussion's made you sentimental," Dino teased with a wink.

Azalya pulled a childish face. "I'm being serious. So thank you... for clearing the air as well."

"You're welcome," Dino replied with severe solemnity, drawing a giggle from the girl.

They both jumped when his cell phone rang, tooting the ridiculous theme song from Super Mario. She tensed immediately, and Dino made a "calm down" gesture as he answered it. "_Pronto_. Uh-huh. That's fine. No, the hospital. Gotcha. Ciao." **[4]**

Unable to make sense of Dino's end of the conversation, Azalya asked warily, "Who was that?"

"The family. They're waiting for a briefing back at the hotel." Seeing that she hadn't relaxed, he added, "Everything's fine. I'll meet Romario downstairs and head back."

Azalya nodded and said, "But the stairs will hurt to fall down. Better call him up. "

An unexpected response to her suggestion came from behind the heavy beige curtains as Romario pushed them aside. "No need to call, boss; I've been waiting. These stairs aren't padded like the ones back home."

"See? Romario agrees with me." She grinned at the middle-aged man, making a mental note to switch the shower curtain for the window drapes. Romario, who had to be at least six feet tall, was proof that anyone could hide behind them. Then again, he and all of Dino's trusted men had learned the art of concealment better than most spies.

"Always gangin' up on me." Dino made a mock angry face. "Show more respect for your boss."

"Yes, sir," Romario saluted.

"Well, Romario, let's go tell the other boys 'bout the situation." Dino got up from his chair and kissed her cheek in parting. "Get some rest, Aza," he advised.

Azalya laid down, careful not to bump her head against the wall, and pulled the clean sheets around her with her uninjured arm. Then, she slipped her fingers beneath the fluffy pillow and curled them around the grip of the gun hidden there. With what could only be described as spoiled brat syndrome, she peeked over the edge of blanket and murmured, "Are you going back to Italy?"

"How could I go when my littlest cousin is hospitalized?" Dino's tone was silly, his expression solemn. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Closing her eyes, Azalya smiled. "Ciao."

"Ciao."

* * *

_And they never saw each other again... dundundun!  
_...Just kidding ^-^; -shot-

**~Translation Notes~**

**[1] **Foolish undertaking**  
[2] **Stupid thing**  
**As far as I can tell, _gukyo _is a more sophisticated way to say the same thing. But not being Japanese, I wouldn't know...  
**[3] **Private School of Maralleno (I _did_ tell you I have no naming sense. I promise not _everything _to do with the Cavallone will be related to Ferrari -_-;)**  
[4] **_Pronto_ is how they answer the phone in Italy :]  
I'm not sure why we say "Hello?" ...as if we don't know there's a person on the other line XD;

**I Heart Rant Time **(It's okay to tell me if you don't... XD)

Guys. A few days ago, I found out that the translated English version of _shinu ki_ (AKA Dying Will) is _Deathperation_. Deathperation! XD I laughed out loud. Really. Deathperation? I like. It's clever, in a way. I wonder if _shinu ki _is anything weird like that in Japanese. Anyone know?  
Wow. Short rant. Because... following the advice of my readers, I wrote out my rant as usual. Then, I cut out the (too) irrelevant ranting. Predictably, I was left with very little rant and a lot more to say.

**I Have Questions for you guys **(bolded because I suspect most just skip the ranting... XD;;)

1. One of my major weaknesses as a writer is conveying emotions. I'd really appreciate any feedback you could give on Azalya's heart-to-heart with Dino, because every comment will help me improve. If you would?  
2. Another weakness of mine (why do I have so many ;_;) is creating a good balance of dialogue and detail/action sequences. Seeing as how the backbone for this entire chapter is the interaction between Aza and Dino, what do you think of the complementing narrative?

Be as upfront as you like, I beg you. I beg you with virtual cookies! And, as always, thank you all for reading -heart- Because even if you don't review or fav or sub, it's a compliment that you read at all, so thank you!


	9. The Next Assignment

**Recap:**_ A long-awaited heart-to-heart with Dino finally clears the air, so to speak, and fills the hospital with peace and love. A certain sneaky boss takes advantage of the resulting positive energy to convince our protagonist to help her dear friend Tsuna ease into his new life. She'll have yet another order in this next part, and oh, it'll come as a great big surprise, but no one seems to care about Tsuna's opinion on the matter. _

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 9: Détente Part II** **(The Next Assignment)**

Sunday. The day of rest. But as one literary god had once wittily remarked, there was no rest for the wicked—which meant Azalya must have been a nasty piece of work indeed. In her world, Sunday was just another day in a never-ending cycle of vicious work. It should have been motivation for seeking salvation, and heading to the church down the street would have been a good start. But she was there in the hospital, confessing to a motley group of Mafioso instead of to a priest.

With her head bowed in a perverse imitation of prayer, Azalya was accepting the blame for the difficulties she'd caused by trying to help. Her eyes were fixed on Tsuna's scuffed brown shoes, which were the length of exactly one white floor tile. Even without looking at his face, she'd observed him long enough to know that his expression would be one of confounded surprise.

As No Good Tsuna, he'd be unaccustomed to such a display of subordination. As the most ridiculously ignorant Mafioso, he wouldn't know how to respond. Finally, too many seconds after she'd finished delivering her apology, Tsuna managed to speak. "Er, ah, yeah, well..." the misfit boss-to-be mumbled, shifting his weight uncomfortably. The rubber soles squeaked on the tiled floor as Tsuna rocked on the balls of his feet.

The pair of sandal-clad feet to Tsuna's right moved towards hers, and then a warm palm thumped against her bony shoulder blade. "Don't sweat it," Yamamoto said with a laugh. "It was pretty fun goin' against those Kokuyo guys. And these injuries are nothing. Ya can't play without things getting a little rough."

Azalya raised her eyes disbelievingly to stare at the boy whose faulty understanding of every crisis could make Tsuna look like a genius. She opened her mouth, expecting a sarcastic comment to roll out, but she was just as tongue-tied as the No Good Vongola heir.

"_Your_ arm, though," Yamamoto said, looking concerned. "That's something to worry about. Captain'll flip if you can't play in the autumn."

Azalya straightened up all the way and subconsciously ran her fingers over the hard plaster of her splint. "It was my fault," she said of her arm, which wouldn't have been injured if she'd been smarter about Mukuro.

Reborn had told her all about Mukuro's defeat, and his recounting had been heavy on the unflattering details of her failure and rescue. From what she'd gathered, it was thanks to the fractured arm that she hadn't been executed—or worse, sentenced time in the Iron Walls. Well, actually, the injury was just a side effect of having been on the receiving end of one of Yamamoto's well-intentioned attacks.

"It was obvious to us that Mukuro had control when you appeared by Lancia's side. You are of some use, so we felt it would have been a pity to simply kill you. But since the Vendicare found you unconscious with an enemy, they naturally assumed you were a traitor," Reborn had told her, his patronizing tone implying a great many negatives about her abilities. "They arrested you, as you know, and were prepared to treat you as a mafia criminal. Tsuna convinced them otherwise."

"Tsuna?" Azalya had repeated skeptically.

And to speak of the devil, the No Good heir, flanked by his right hand men Gokudera and Yamamoto, had entered the small hospital room.

Azalya had looked at the Japanese descendent of the first Vongola boss and had seen nothing more than a bullied weakling incapable of leadership. He couldn't be trusted with classroom duties, let alone the most influential mafia family. How could the Ninth expect a boy who couldn't take attendance properly to head a crime family? Then, she'd turned to the two Reborn had chosen to join the Vongola. That Gokudera would follow Tsuna came as no surprise. He was a taboo child and therefore a loser himself. But Yamamoto? He was a normal kid. Athletic and charismatic but lacking the common sense to cease his involvement with the mafia.

How had this unlikely team managed to defeat one of the mafia's greatest criminals?

It was all very unbelievable. And it'd called for an apology, which once delivered, left the unfortunate task of repayment.

"Repayment?" Tsuna asked. His neck twisted almost 180 degrees until he was facing his tutor. His pale brown eyes begged Reborn for advice.

Reborn scoffed, "Can't you even make a decision without my help?"

"Have her kowtow five hundred times, Tenth," Gokudera suggested earnestly. "Bow to the Tenth's superiority," Gokudera ordered, pointing a many-ringed finger at the floor.

Yamamoto saved her from the dishonor of refusing. He walked over to his friend(?) and draped an arm over his shoulders. "What a weird thing to say!" he exclaimed.

"Get the hell offa me," the testy youth exploded, shaking Yamamoto off. He bared his teeth at the tall Japanese youth, practically growling.

While he was distracted and unable to make any more idiotic suggestions, Reborn determined her task. "You'll teach Tsuna how to shoot."

Tsuna sputtered disbelievingly, "S-shoot? Like a gun! But I have the X-Gloves... More like the mafia has nothing to do with me! I don't wanna learn something dangerous like that!"

Reborn raised a tiny hand and beckoned.

Tsuna edged reluctantly towards the bed. He was expecting punishment and was not let down.

Ever the abusive tutor, Reborn reached out dug his fingers into Tsuna's earlobe. Seeing as how he was standing on the bed and Tsuna was a midget to begin with, Reborn's hand was already level his head. "You'll do it," said Reborn, twisting his student's ear mercilessly.

The light-haired boy yelped in pain and did a sort of odd tap dance on the spot. "Sorry, Reborn-sama. I'll do it," Tsuna squealed.

Just her luck. There was enough to deal with between Chiara and the Vongola succession, and now to top it off, Azalya had Tsuna to worry about. She had no idea why Reborn would delegate something as important as gunmanship onto her, but she didn't like it. Being part of a less powerful family didn't mean she was at the Vongola's beck and call, as the Ninth so often liked to assume of Dino. But conscious of her family's position, Azalya isolated her discontent to a discreet sigh.

"I'd be happy to help Tsuna," Azalya lied through her tightly clenched, perfect teeth.

Reborn nodded in a self-satisfied way. "Good," he said. "Why don't you get started now?" It was an inexorable order, worded as a suggestion, and they all knew it.

Tsuna shot Azalya a fearful look and hedged, "But... my chores...er, babysitting Lambo and I-pin..."

Reborn quickly came up with a solution. "You," he addressed Gokudera, "Tsuna needs you for something."

Gokudera snapped to attention, pushing Yamamoto away. "The Tenth needs me? I'll do anything!" he ardently crowed. Just moments ago, his face had looked like a bomb ready to detonate. Now, the delinquent looked just short of prostrating himself. It was pathetic, really, his sickening obsequious behavior.

"You're the same," remarked Reborn. His child's voice was barely above a whisper. The comment was meant to be overhead, but only Azalya, who stood closest to the bed, caught the words.

Azalya's head whipped around. Her cheeks turned the color of a sunburn. She retorted hotly, "I am _not_ the same!"

The baby hitman just stared ahead blankly, as though he couldn't be bothered to contradict her.

"Don't interrupt us. Reborn-san was telling me what the Tenth needs," Gokudera said, shooting her a look of utmost annoyance and superiority. Apparently, his hearing had been damaged by his dynamite. He'd only heard Azalya's outburst, which made no sense out of context.

"Go to Maman and do Tsuna's chores," Reborn said shortly. Then, ignoring Gokudera's crestfallen face, he turned to Yamamoto and said much more civilly, "You, head on back, too. Thanks for visiting." He jumped down from the bed, leaving two footprints about the size of Azalya's palm on the white sheets. They were dark, almost black, and made Azalya wonder just where he'd been walking and why he hadn't left tracks on the way in.

"Thanks for visiting," Azalya echoed as they left, plopping down on the bed and brushing away the dirt left by Reborn's shoes. She was surprised at how cleanly—and independently without regard for their feelings—Reborn had closed their evening, but she knew better than to complain. Instead, she gestured for Tsuna to sit down, only half out of friendliness. He was fidgeting too much for her comfort.

Tsuna tiptoed over to the plastic chair positioned near the bed and sat down so close to the edge that she expected him to fall right off.

Though she was tempted to watch him twitch for a while, she took pity on him. "So," she initiated, trying to bury the awkwardness they both felt with words, "I don't suppose you've ever fired a gun?"

"A real gun? Or does a BB gun count, maybe?"

"Have you played with BB guns?" she asked, feeling more hopeful. Maybe teaching Tsuna would be slightly less impossible than she'd originally thought.

"No, no, I haven't," Tsuna said quickly, holding out his hands. "I was only wondering. I've never even touched a gun before in my life," he confessed.

_Then why mention it?_ she thought acidly, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She squashed the feeling of frustration to the bottom of her heart because yelling at Tsuna wouldn't have helped. _Don't lose your cool, _she reminded herself. _Focus. Control. _"All right. That's fine. This might be better, actually, if we're starting fresh." Azalya even threw in an encouraging smile when she'd finished talking. She'd never really looked intimidating, not by mafia standards, but the smile made warmed her expression to a level almost human.

"Okay..."

Tsuna had spoken with his usual Hamlet flavoring, and this never failed to irritate the girl who'd been raised around a stronger type of man. Taking a theme from Dino's appeal earlier, Azalya reminded herself that Tsuna didn't have a mafia boss's usual background, that he was at a disadvantage, that he had a right to act depressed and confused. She reminded herself that she'd promised Dino she'd help him. Azalya leaned over and patted Tsuna on the back. Her hands were cold rather than warm, like Yamamoto's had been, but the friendly gesture was more than she'd ever given him in the past.

Tsuna stared at her. His eyes were large and a soft brown. If not feminine, exactly, they certainly made him look innocent and younger than his fourteen years, child-like.

Trying for an amiable tone, Azalya widened her smile and urged, "Cheer up. Learning how to shoot is out of formality and tradition in your case, not necessity, since you have the X-gloves. In all likelihood, Reborn will never have you shoot someone."

Tsuna didn't look so sure. "You can never know what Reborn wants," he said almost tearfully. "I'll probably have to—I don't know, go hunting for criminals or something! The Mukuro thing was enough! I definitely don't want to deal with anymore crazies; I just want to have a normal life with normal classmates."

Azalya rubbed the bumpy plaster covering her arm. Thoughtfully, she said, "Do you? Really?"

Tsuna's head had been falling despondently toward his knees. Now, it jerked up. He couldn't have looked more startled if she'd slapped him across the face. "Of course, I do. I never _asked_ to be caught up in this mafia mess."

"No, you didn't." Azalya shook her head. She was silent for several seconds, carefully crafting a neutral question. "How much have you learned about the Vongola Family beyond the fact that you will succeed the current Ninth?"

"Er," thought Tsuna. His eyes drifted to the upper right. "It's powerful, I heard. But other than that, nothing," he admitted, confirming her suspicions that, despite the brilliant job he'd done with Dino, Reborn was seriously lacking in some basic teaching skills. If he'd intentionally kept Tsuna in the dark, Azalya couldn't begin to fathom the reason why.

"Do you want to know more?" When he declined immediately, she amended her offer: "Would you rather we had story time or a gunfight in the hospital?"

His Adam's apple bobbed when he gulped. "Story time, I'll take story time!"

Azalya laughed at his reaction and at how quickly his mind changed with a little threat, especially one that was so blatantly an empty one. "Good choice. Shall we dim the lights and sit in a circle? Not that two is enough to make a circle."

"But what'll I tell Reborn?"

She shrugged. "Tell him I'll take you to the shooting range tomorrow night. Unless he expected me to teach you gun history, it's impractical for us to begin now, anyways. What am I supposed to target, the ceiling light?"

They both looked up at the streaked ceiling. It was a recessed light with a small yellow bulb in the center of a silver reflector and would have made an excellent target. Except it would have rained shards of glass down on them.

Azalya hit the glowing red button that was mounted on the wall behind her, turning off the lights. Then, she swung her legs over the side, slid off the bed, and settled herself on the cool floor with her back against the bed. "Come on," she said softly, "make yourself comfortable."

After hesitating, Tsuna joined her on the floor. In the dark, his expression was hidden, but he shifted with obvious unease and anticipation.

Some things wouldn't be nearly as bad as he thought. Some things would be worse than he'd ever imagined. Azalya wondered where to start. The beginning was the obvious choice. But with Tsuna's attention span, he'd zone out after the first few decades of the history lesson. She decided to go with a time period he could relate to. After the prolonged silence, she said, "You know the Vongola Family is powerful. It's not a large family, though, never has been. I'd be surprised if it's half the size of some of its allies, but your family is the most powerful because it is at the head of a mafia alliance: The Vongola Alliance.

"I'll tell you that about one-third of the global economy is controlled by the mafia. The Alliance accounts for more than seventy percent of that. This means the Vongola Family essentially controls the trading, the casinos, the lobbyists, the politicians... everything the mafia has a stake in, you can bet the Vongola has a—what do you call it?—a finger in the pie."

When Tsuna spoke, she could almost hear his fish-eyed expression in his mystified tone. "If that family is so important, why choose me to lead it?"

_Good question_, she thought, wondering how to respond. Truth be told, she'd asked herself and Dino that same question an infinite number of times without receiving a satisfactory answer. _It would be too simple to say that Tsuna is the only candidate for the position. He'll find out about Xanxus sooner or later, especially since the man doesn't have the good sense to die and Timoteo doesn't have the heart to lock him away. _

"Cavallone-san?" Tsuna said uncertainly, and Azalya realized she'd left him hanging for far too long.

She sighed softly. Maybe it had been a mistake to begin with something so complicated. "Vongola Nono, Timoteo, would be the best person to answer that," she told him evasively. "All I can say is that he's been struggling to hold his position. Some people say that he's weak or sick or senile. He was boss in Grandfather Alfredo's time, back when the Vongola Family was the uncontested backseat driver of every car, back before all the nonsense with the _faziones_—the _touhashin_," she translated quickly for Tsuna. She felt a flush of pride from not having to look up the word. **[1]**

"_Touhashin_..." Tsuna repeated carefully, as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of the word.

"Think turf wars. Only it's much easier to deal with rival families than internal disputes."

"Internal disputes... Like Longchamp-kun's family?"

It took her a moment to recognize the name, and when she did, she was amazed that Tsuna had made the connection. "It's different," Azalya assured him, thinking of the explosions and gunshots she regularly heard coming from the family's compound and hesitating to frighten him even more. "Less outright violence," she explained.

"Oh. It sounds great."

Taking a deep breath of stale-ish air, Azalya willed herself to stay patient. Tsuna's aggravating behavior wasn't helping her opinion of him. "Maybe," she suggested tightly, "it would help you understand if I start at the beginning."

"Maybe."

_Don't get angry at the _stupidaggine, she ordered herself, counting backwards from twenty at the same time in an attempt to reign in her rising temper. _Focus_. **[2]**

"The Vongola Family has humble roots. It started with the Napoleonic Wars, when France had another one of its grand delusions of exceptionalism. In 1800, Napoleon invaded Italy. It was just a loose collection of separate states, but he _usurpò_—he stole their power and tried instating his own corrupt government. You can imagine the reaction. Nationalist movements popped up everywhere, and the French did all they could to squash them. For decades, it was chaos: unexplained disappearances, violence in the streets; people were terrified. The Vongola Family changed that. **[i]**

"The family started as a vigilante group led by Giotto Vongola. He was the founder, the protector. He must have been a god to the Italians, and not just to the people on the street. He made his family indispensible to the nationalists, so when they finally succeeded in unifying the country, the Vongola didn't disappear. Giotto rose to power with the first king, and he brought the Vongola Family up with him. The Vongola has stayed in power ever since, even after Giotto left Italy, but now rival families think they've found the weak link in the Vongola's chain of power."

"Me," Tsuna put in, sounding both miserable and offended. "Well, sorry, I don't want to join the mafia anyways."

"I didn't mean you," she said with a dismissive flick of her head. Sheesh. Give a guy the Vongola Family and he started thinking everything was about him. "Apart from a few members of the Alliance, hardly anyone knows that the Ninth has chosen a successor. Do you have any idea how very dangerous that would be? Don't you remember what happened to Vongola Nono's sons? Enrico, Matsumo, and Frederico—their deaths weren't accidents."

"What!" Tsuna shrilled, scrambling to his feet and striding past her. "I was already targeted by that Mukuro freak! I don't want to get assassinated! No, thanks!"

"Look out," she warned him, "for the bed."

She heard a loud crash, which was the sound of Tsuna tripping over the bed and knocking over the nightstand as he flailed around. The plastic cups sitting on the top fell, dumping their contents on the boy lying beneath them.

Azalya stood and felt along the wall for the light switch. When the yellow bulb flickered to life, she extended a hand to help a sputtering Tsuna to his feet. She brought him a towel from the bathroom, and still with the impenetrable controlled mien, Azalya excused herself. "I don't mean to agitate you, Tsuna. I'm not telling you these things in the right order if I've scared you. There's more to say."

Tsuna dried his dripping hair without thanking her. "I've heard a lot, and none of it impresses me," he sulked, tossing the towel onto the bed. His darkened hair, which he'd done a poor job of drying, was flattened against his head and several locks had dropped over his eyes. His new hairstyle only weakened his unconvincing glare.

Azalya laughed briefly, tossing back her own wavy hair. "Liar," she observed with amusement. "That's like saying the NASA moon mission doesn't impress you."

Tsuna broke easily. "All right, fine. So it's amazing what what's-his-face did, but that doesn't help me at all. I don't want the power or anything like that, okay? It's not cool; it's terrifying," he concluded.

Watching his face closely for a reaction, Azalya informed him, "No matter what Reborn and Vongola Nono say, the choice to lead the family—and how you lead it, should you choose to—is yours. You can turn it down, if you want to. I wouldn't blame you."

"Then of course, I—"

Azalya ignored him and raised her voice to cover his. "I didn't tell you this earlier because I didn't want to discourage you, but the Vongola Family hasn't lived up to Giotto's values. His successors sought power, not peace, and never mind the cost. In his youth, the Ninth made enemies with his aggressiveness, and now in old age, he alienates old allies with his complacency. The Vongola's recent track record is nothing to be impressed by. You have a chance to reform, to redeem, a falling family. If you need proof it can be done, look at my family. Thanks to Dino, the Cavallone Family is no longer a joke."

Tsuna's skin had turned a sickly green that clashed horribly with his hair. His jaw had slackened, and his eyes were bugging out. He muttered something, probably rude words, that Azalya couldn't catch.

_No pressure_, she mentally added, suddenly worried that she'd let her mouth get too far ahead of her. It wouldn't have been the first time. With a sigh, Azalya rolled open the door. "Go on home," she counseled the bewildered teen, reading the indecision on his face. "Think about what I said."

* * *

**[1] **Factions/factionalism**  
[2]** Stupid thing

**[i] **Did you enjoy my little history lesson? This is all true—I double checked. Aren't you proud of me for remembering so much about Post-French Revolution Europe from WHAP _two years _after the course?

**The Questions That Would Make Me Love You Forever If You Answered Them**

1. Aza talked a lot in this chapter. It's not OOC, per se, but it's definitely a bit odd... :[  
What do you guys think of it?  
2. She's treating Tsuna a bit differently now, isn't she? The transition is (a) good (b) crappy, but I know what you're getting at (c) unspeakably OOC. Stop writing. Just stop.  
As you may know by know, I am a freak about characterization...

**Quarries and Asphalt**

Of the hitherto unseen romance that this story supposedly contains... I can say only one thing: I suck at writing romance. Que sera sera. More like quand sera sera. Or maybe qui. But not AzaxDino because... er... just... no. No , I've always been a sucker for untainted familial love. Isn't Dino just so cute and huggable and stuff-in-a-bag-and-take-home-able?

As always, the three C's are your friends and mine. They beg that if you have comments or concerns to contribute. TriC. Triceratops. Oh, yeah! Thanks for reading! Goodbye! (For another fifty thousand months... hopefully not.)


	10. Everyday Life Reprise

**Recap: **_Azalya isn't even out of the hospital and the Vongola family is at it again. This time, she's coerced into teaching Tsuna the basics of the Mafia's staple weapon (which doesn't exactly have the largest presence in Tsuna's circle): the gun. Good luck, my child._

**Chapter 10: Everyday Life Reprise**

**

* * *

**

_Dong—dong—dong—dong_

Azalya walked into homeroom and took her seat just as the school bell's last chime faded away.

The room was full of statues, sleep-deprived students who sat frozen at their desks. Their teacher wove between them and planted herself in front of Azalya's desk. The girl with the dyed pink hair sitting in the row before hers edged away from the danger zone. The desk and chair screeched against the floor, making all of them but Mawabi wince.

"Well, Cavallone, it's a surprise to see you in school today," the teacher said in a tone that might have passed for pleasant had her taunt mouth not given away her anger. "I can't wait to receive your excuse."

Azalya fixed her malleable expression into one of contrite deference. "I haven't been feeling well, Sensei," she replied, keeping her eyes on the hands folded in her lap. Like a provoked animal, Mawabi attacked when a student dared to meet her beady eyes.

The teacher scoffed. "For a week and a half?"

"Yes, Sensei." Azalya pulled a sealed envelop from her schoolbag and offered it to the teacher. "I have a note from my doctor."

Mawabi didn't so much accept the excuse as tear the envelope from her student's hand. "And what happened to your hand?" With the envelope, she tapped Azalya's cast, which was already graffitied with the names of classmates she'd run into in the hall. "Don't tell me you were one of the students attacked?"

Azalya raised her head but looked past her teacher towards the tall young man sitting in the front row.

Like the other students, Yamamoto had been closely watching. Noticing her imploring look, he put a hand on his desk with two fingers touching the wood surface, like the legs of a standing man. Then, he walked the man off the edge, kicking its legs as it tumbled through the air and bounced off his leg.

A grin almost cracked Azalya's mask of chagrin. He would. "I fell down," she lied sadly.

Several of her classmates giggled. The girl with the pink hair made a choking sound.

"I see," Mawabi said stonily, shooting one of her infamous death glares around the room. "You chose an inconvenient time to _feel unwell_, Cavallone. Term end exams are in less than two weeks. You have a significant amount of work to catch up on, considering your teachers couldn't locate you at all during the week and a half you were _out sick_." She snapped her sharp fingers at the sleepy boy closest to the podium

He leapt up at once and collected an impossibly tall stack of papers from beneath it. Looking sympathetic, he dumped the pile onto Azalya's desk and scurried back to his seat.

Azalya held back a sigh and did her best not to think about the time she would have to waste completing the missed work on top of training Tsuna and convincing him the Mafia was a worthwhile future. Life just wasn't fair. She didn't complain, though, and thanked the teacher instead.

"Brat," replied Mawabi. "Go get changed, all of you."

The students exchanged looks with their friends and neighbors.

"But the bell hasn't rung yet, Sensei," Seiko piped up uncharacteristically.

Then, the bell rang.

"There," the teacher said, sparing a smile for her pet. "Now, go!"

* * *

For only the second time that year, Azalya was in the gym class with the girls. They were inside the stuffy gymnasium, leisurely passing a castoff football back and forth. Azalya nudged the ball in the direction of Pink Hair's uncoordinated friend. The blue-haired girl squealed and kicked at the blindly. By some miracle, her foot made contact with the side of the ball, sending it spinning out of the circle and right into the trashcan next to the storage room.

Azalya chuckled good-naturedly with the rest of the class, jogging over to the metal bin on the other side of the gym to find a new ball. It was empty, of course, because the boys had taken the others outside.

"Sorry, guys," the girl said with poorly disguised cheer. "Sorry, Sensei, it looks like we can't play anymore."

The teacher, who was used to lame attempts to get out of actual physical activity, flipped her drooping ponytail. "Three laps around the football field," she ordered, barely concealing an evil smirk. "Try not to get hit by one of the boys."

The class groaned as a whole. Several girls, the perpetrator included, muttered explicatives as they began "wogging," a combination of walking and not moving. On the other hand, Azalya was glad for the chance to get out of the hot and humid gymnasium and outdoors, where it was still hot and humid, but where it was at least breezy.

"Happy to see Yamamoto-kun, nee?" Seiko teased, trudging alongside her. "You're smiling like crazy."

Azalya stuck her tongue out at the girl. "Wrong, silly. The gym is disgusting. I'm happy to be outside."

"Oh, sure. I know you looove Yama—look, he's waving!" she exclaimed, clutching Azalya's arm as she returned his wave. "And he loves you, too," she sang, loudly enough that the group closest to them overheard.

"Do you like Yamamoto-kun, Cavallone?" a classmate named Yuri asked, staring at the tall, lean figure in the midfield.

Azalya shook her head jerkily. She ran faster, pulling away from the eavesdroppers until she and Seiko were at least half a lap ahead of the rest of the girls. "Talk a bit louder, why don't you?" she grumbled in Seiko's ear.

"Run a bit faster, why don't you?" the girl countered, practically gasping for air. "This is sprinting! You know I'm not in shape."

"Punishment for spreading rumors."

"It isn't a rumor if it's true," she huffed.

Azalya's brown eyes flitted to the lean figure that was now running a victory lap around the goal. He must have just scored; on his face was an idiotic, elated grin. Well, she was too far away to see his expression, but she knew his white teeth would be gleaming in his darkly tanned face. "It isn't true," she denied. Under her breath, half to convince herself, she murmured, "I'm not that stupid."

"Come on, you should admit it and go out already," Seiko wheedled between pants.

"We aren't running fast enough if you can still talk," Azalya said warningly.

Seiko ignored her threat. "He obviously likes you. Remember how he asked her to join the baseball team? And you accepted, didn't you?"

"Invitation to join a baseball team does not surmount to a marriage proposal," Azalya retorted.

"Pur-lease! You can't beat my logic with vocabulary words."

Azalya sighed deeply. She'd never have thought friends could be this meddlesome. Maybe it was just girls. She couldn't imagine Gokudera needling Tsuna like this. "It's just I don't like him, okay? Now can we change the subject?"

To her surprise, Seiko actually let it go, giving Azalya a pitying look. "All right. When's your next baseball practice?"

"This afternoon," Azalya told her with the suspicion that Seiko would bring it all back to Yamamoto. "Masato, the third-year captain, practically ambushed me this morning. That's why I was late. Not because I was leaving a love letter in Yamamoto-kun's shoe locker or something equally ridiculous."

"Hmm," hummed Seiko as they finished their third lap. "Hold on," she requested when they were right in the threshold of the gym door. "I got a stone in my shoe."

"The guys are bringing the equipment in," Azalya noted, slipping past her friend into the dimly lit gymnasium. "You're in the way."

"I'll be fast." The other girl tugged her left sneaker off. Very meticulously, Seiko shook the sneaker like she was trying to kill it.

Azalya didn't see so much as a speck of dust fall out, but she did notice a shadow fall over them.

"Hey," Yamamoto's voice said from behind them. "We're bringing in the stuff right now, so you guys might have to move."

Seiko stepped back into her shoe and straightened, beaming. "Hi, Yamamoto-kun! Why aren't you helping the guys? Slacking off?"

"Oh," he laughed. "I just put the footballs away in the storage room. Strange thing: I found a ball in the trash can."

Seiko giggled loudly, unnaturally so to Azalya's ears. "That was Hitomi, the girl with the blue hair. Asa-chan kicked the ball to her, but… Well, we aren't really good at football, so we couldn't have played a real game anyways," she chattered brainlessly. "So Sensei sent us on a run instead, but Asa-chan ran way too fast, so now I'm exhausted. Completely exhausted."

Yamamoto nodded, but Azalya wasn't sure how much of her friend's rant he had followed. "There's a few guys who don't play good."

_Tsuna_, she tagged mentally. Azalya had seen him struggling to keep up with the ball. _How can he come back from defeating Rokudo Mukuro and continue his pathetic act in school?_ _His team probably lost because of him._

"It was a close game," Yamamoto was saying, "but we lost. We could've used you, Azalya."

She'd been zoning out. Now her drifting brown eyes jerked back to Yamamoto's face. "What? Oh, yeah, I played some in Italy, but I don't know that I could've been much help with this." She indicated the arm.

Yamamoto ran his hand over his shorn hair, looking contrite. "Right… But you're coming to practice today? It's at—"

"Namimori Batting Center," she finished. "Captain told me this morning. He'll probably break my other arm if I don't go. So I'll be there."

"Cool," he said.

"Yeah. Cool," she repeated for lack of anything better to say. She wished Seiko'd stop staring at them with that hungry expression.

There was a silence. Then: "Yamamoto, you son of a gun," Tanaka screamed out in a strained voice that suggested he was lacking oxygen. "Stop flirting and help us move these damn goalposts!"

Yamamoto's lips split and stretched impossibly wide. Though both girls had flushed, he didn't seem bothered by Tanaka's words. "See ya," he chirped with a wave.

As soon as Yamamoto as gone, Azalya rounded on Seiko, red-faced and glaring. "You have no idea how much I hate you right now," she grumbled.

The Japanese girl only grinned and crooned, "Are you looking forward to practice with him _alooone_?"

Azalya shook her finger at the other girl. "Don't push it," she warned.

Seiko patted the taller girl on the shoulder. "I'm just welcoming you back."

* * *

Nothing much to say... I know it's been a while... I'm going to try to alternate updates with this story and D:TFS, but who knows? I don't have time during the week to do much writing since I GOT A JOOOOOB :D

Anyways.

THE MANGAKA STOLE MY DIALOGUE. I completely wrote chap 9 before the chap in which the 9th tries to sweet talk Tsuna into accepting the role by saying he didn't have to. He said that the family was in decline! He said it! It's mine mine mine... T_T Well... since the author has the copyright, I guess it's hers. FINE. Gah. The difference is that Aza was being sincere! I guess that shows the 9th isn't the happy grandpa softy character. Well, fine.  
**To answer some questions**, the history that I made us is half fake. The vigilante group thing is canon. Apparently, the decline of the Vongola values is also canon now. (deep sigh) The Napoleonic wars is not... because I fudged the time period a bit. That's okay though, right? :)

Want to gimme some feedback? -puppy dog eyes-

Thanks for reading!


	11. A Change of Pace

**Recap**: _Poor Azalya gets no peace. She's back in school, but everyone's giving her a hard time. Term end exams are right around the corner, friends are enemies in disguise, and rumors of love are afoot. It's junior high school life, mafia style. _

_(I've realized that I use the recap to make fun of my own series... I should call it "parody of the previous chapter"... Don't believe everything you read here...)_

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 11: A Change of Pace**

"Cavallone!" Masato roared when he stormed out of the locker room and saw Azalya chatting on a bench between Tanaka and a first year. "What are you doin'? Being injured ain't an excuse to be lazy! You skipped a thousand practices last week!"

Shocked by the captain's bellow, Azalya nearly slid off the wooden bench. She broke off her conversation with Tanaka abruptly and faced the livid team captain with a wide-eyed and guiltless expression. "Captain, the batting cages are full."

Masato sputtered, rubbing his fist against the nest of short black hair sticking up from his head. "Well, kick them out!" he shouted imperiously.

The first year shook his had sadly and managed an embarrassed, apologetic smile for the hoards of terrified elementary schoolers milling around them. "Cap'n," he explained calmly, "we're just waitin' for our turn. Yamamoto-kun, Takeda, and Asakura-kun still got twenty minutes."

"Well," Masato replied immediately at his usual insane volume, "laps! 500 around the block!"

"Don't even bother pointing out he's making us run about ten miles in twenty minutes," Tanaka muttered to them as Masato took off at top speed (probably to find a batting cage he could bully from a six-year-old.) "Cap'n tried for a two minute mile last year. Collapsed and spent two days in the hospital."

Azalya rolled her eyes, reminded of a certain other sports extremist. "Captain wouldn't happen to be friends with Sasagawa-kun, would he?"

Tanaka snorted, throwing his shaggy head back. "Are you kidding me! That's a bromance if I ever saw one!"

"Um, Senpai," the innocent first year whose name Azalya hadn't heard said tentatively, "are we going to go run?"

"Uh… yeah, yeah, let's go—no, just leave your stuff," he said quickly. Under his breath, he groaned, "First years… So uptight."

Azalya punched Tanaka's shoulder encouragingly. "Cheer up. Don't sulk just because your team was creamed during P.E.—"

"WHAT!" Tanaka exploded, making a grab for Azalya's neck and missing. "You take that back!"

Laughing freely at the scandalized look of shock on the first year's face, Azalya dodged another attempt on her life and jogged backwards away from the fuming teen.

Tanaka, of course, gave chase, growling about how he was going to show his team's loss was nothing more than a fluke by disemboweling her.

The first year, obviously regretting his decision to join a club with such absurd seniors, followed miserably.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Azalya had managed to lead Tanaka in an exhausting five-kilometer marathon that ended when Tanaka threw himself face down onto the batting center's fluffy lawn, coughing and wheezing. "Show—you—" he choked out, floundering around.

"Help me get him up?" Azalya requested of the other boy, whom they had lapped twice times and was less tired.

"Eh?" he panted. "Sure, Cavallone-senpai."

Somehow, each grabbing an arm and heaving him up, Azalya and the first year managed to drag Tanaka to their assigned cages. They dumped the drooling lump on the bench next to his bulky blue duffle, then turned to the cages.

Masato had already taken one, leaving only the two with Yamamoto and Asakura, another classmate.

"Heya!" Yamamoto grunted, taking a final swing and (of course) smashing the ball into the exact center of the homerun target. "Whew!" he exclaimed. "Thought that was gonna be a foul."

Asakura missed the last ball and swore. "Damn it, Yamamoto. Why don't you try _not_ showing us all up?"

Yamamoto opened his mouth, probably to say something modest.

Just then, the P.A. system gave a loud screech like the kind in action movies right before a car crash. "Atteeeeention," a crackly voice announced far too enthusiastically, "our batting record has just been broken by player number seven"—they all glanced at the faded seven on the wire fence above Yamamoto's head—"with forty-seven straight homeruns, beating our previous record-holder by twelve! Yahooooo!"

Azalya winced as the speaker cut off with another wail of feedback. She couldn't say the statistic surprised her. It was scary, but it didn't surprise her. "Nice record," she congratulated as he walked up, carrying his baseball bat over the shoulder. "Not an even fifty?"

"Next time," he promised. "Maybe there's a prize."

"Name on a plaque?" she suggested. "Free membership?"

"That'd save the school some money, huh, if they didn't have to pay to send us? And we can only afford eight at a time…So you want it?" he asked, indicating the cage he'd just vacated. To the first year, he said, "You can take Asakura's."

Azalya nodded and grabbed her chipped wooden bat from under the bench. It was the school's actually, and she saw Yamamoto give her poor, abused bat a sad look.

"You want to use mine?" he offered generously, holding it out.

The ash was polished and new-looking, which was surprising considering the stress it'd endured with Yamamoto. Then again, he probably took better care of his baseball equipment than most Mafiosi did their guns. And if his bat was anything like her gun, he should have been loaning it out. "No, it's fine. Thanks, Yamamoto-kun."

Miraculously reenergized, Tanaka sat up and noticed Azalya putting on a helmet. He squawked, "What the hell is this? Bros before hoes, man!"

Azalya ignored him. She needed to focus if she wanted to hit a single ball one-handed.

* * *

"Atteeeention! A new record was just set or the most straight homeruns! Fifty by… player seven! Well, ain't that something."

The squeal over the P.A. made Tanaka jerk awake with a loud, unattractive snort. "Wha? What happened? Is it my turn?"

"No, practice is finally over," Azalya sighed. "You even slept through Captain shouting about a _one thousand_ lap race."

She was next to him on the bench. Not in batting cage seven. _Her _homerun streak of the day stood at zero and counting backwards. Yamamoto had rotated in for the last thirty-minute session of the evening in Tanaka's place. When Masato's voice couldn't wake you, you were truly out cold.

"So what was that sound?" he asked, looking sleepily confused.

"That was the announcer saying Yamamoto just broke his own record with fifty homeruns."

"What!" Tanaka launched himself off the bench to dive bomb Yamamoto as he left the batting cage. "Man, you gotta share some of that insane skill with me! Is it hereditary?"

Yamamoto wiped his sweaty face on his jersey and stuffed the bat into his oversized red bag. "Dunno," he answered. "My old man learned kendo."

"Then your mom musta been a tomboy like Cavallone?" he bugged.

Azalya scowled at him. "I'm not a tomboy."

"Oh, sure," Tanaka drawled, turning back to her. "You're a girly girl who joined the baseball club."

"I was asked to," she said, folding her arms. She couldn't believe she was arguing about something so trivial.

Tanaka went on, "A girly girl wearing a jersey and trackies. A girly girl who takes P.E. with the guys. Speaking of which, where were you today?"

She shrugged. "With the girls. I assisted a trashcan goal."

"Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"What are you doing?" Masato screamed at them as he zoomed past. "Cool down, one thousand laps! Get moving to infinity and beyond!"

The team's only first year trailed after the crazy captain loyally. He was the only one. He looked on the verge of tears.

Tanaka sighed deeply. "I wonder how many bottles of pocari Captain chugs a day." **[1]**

Azalya picked up her school bag and duffel, slinging the latter over her shoulder. It wasn't heavy, only containing her uniform, bat, and mitt, but felt like toppling over after such a long day. And she still had to suffer Tsuna. "An unhealthy amount, I would say," she muttered as she waved them goodbye.

* * *

Azalya hadn't gone more than a block from Namimori Batting Center when she realized with dread that her footfalls on the asphalt road didn't sound right. Or rather, that they weren't just her own. The sounds were mimicked from a distance of about five meters behind her. She knew it couldn't have been Masato. She'd passed him running in the other direction a few minutes ago. And the first year had surely fainted somewhere by now.

She turned cautiously and gripped her lumpy duffle bag, sharp blue eyes raking her surroundings. It was late, and the sun was on its way to setting, leaving enough light to see but not enough to feel safe. Then again, when had she ever? Azalya lowered her hand into the leather satchel, and her fingers wrapped around the warm rubber grip of a gun.

A rustle came from the wooded area off the road, followed by the sound of a twig cracking.

Most people would have written it off as a squirrel and simply turned up the volume on their iPods. Azalya tensed. She shifted position, careful to keep her injured arm angled away, spreading her concentration between the shivering bushes and faint sounds of bike traffic behind her.

A dark head of hair poked out of the bushes

"It's just me."

Relief made her laugh. "Yamamoto-kun," she said weakly, pulling her arm away. "You scared the crap out of me."

"Sorry. I didn't know you're so jumpy."

"Well…" Azalya glanced over her shoulder at the bushes, which were mercifully still. Maybe it had been a squirrel. She managed a small grin, one that lacked humor. "Things that go bump in the night, you know?"

He seemed to understand there was more to that than her joke, possibly due to his time with the mafia's dangers. "I'll walk you back," he offered, reaching for her duffle. "Where do you live?"

Azalya shifted her bag away from him. _I'm actually on my way to Tsuna's._ Her throat closed on those words rebelliously, as if it didn't want him to know. Which was a ridiculous thought. Azalya coughed quietly. "I'm actually on my way to Tsuna's," she told him. "I live down the other way, in the new complex past that sushi place."

"Hey, cool. I live in that sushi place. I didn't know we were so close."

She raised an eyebrow, realized that wasn't something she would normally do, and smiled awkwardly for a few seconds. To cover up that slipup, Azalya asked, "Why are you going this way, Yamamoto-kun?"

"I'm headin' to Tsuna's. Got a text from Reborn a couple minutes ago about chores… So, I'll walk you there?"

"Um," Azalya agreed with a half-nod, half-shrug. "I'm just going to, uh, tutor him," she blurted.

Another excited response: "Nice! You mind helping me? Amano-sensei'll murder me if I flunk another test."

"I don't mind," she agreed without thinking. _Idiot! You're teaching Tsuna about GUNS._ "Wait," she corrected hastily, "but, since you're busy today, maybe we can study during lunch break or something. We have practice in the afternoon, and Reborn wants me to come every night to help Tsuna. Anyways, I'm sure you aren't as stupid as…" She forced herself to stop. Chagrined by her pointless rambling, Azalya bit her bottom lip to keep from continuing.

Yamamoto didn't seem annoyed by her uncharacteristic chattering. On the contrary, he was smiling. Then again, he usually was.

Azalya was annoyed, though. Until then, she'd completely forgotten about watching the road. Any fifth grade bully could have taken them down while she was distracted. Who knew what lurked in Namimori's clean swept streets? Azalya resolved to be extra diligent in the future, especially since Dino was in the area. Unless he'd left without telling her.

Feeling worse than before, she peered down the side street before Tsuna's block as they passed it. Her eyes lingered on the lumpy, human-sized object lying on the bus stop's bench. It was already too dark to see clearly, but the unconscious homeless man didn't look like much of a threat.

Even as happy-go-lucky as Yamamoto was, he noticed her practically breaking her neck to send menacing glares at the drunk man as they moved away from the street. Sounding amused, he joked, "You expect someone to jump you? Look, we're already at Tsuna's house," Yamamoto said, as though she couldn't have seen that for herself, and pressed the doorbell.

"You can't be too careful in the mafia." She said this with just enough solemnity that it could be mistaken for sarcasm.

"And since Tsuna is the boss, we gotta be extra careful around his house," Yamamoto concluded sagely with a deep nod.

Startled, Azalya glanced his way and saw that his face was uncharacteristically serious, making him look less like a clueless teen. Were it anyone else, she'd have suspected she was being made fun of. It wasn't like Yamamoto to be cruel. Deciding to take his words at face value, Azalya added, "Dino is staying in Namimori this week." She didn't mention, though the complaints were dying to come out, that her boss had never taken his security seriously enough, and Tsuna's family (with the exception of the paranoid Gokudera) was the same way.

Yamamoto scratched his head. "Dino? He's... oh, I remember. Your boss, yeah? He sure loves this game, coming all the way from Italy to play with us." He looked down at her, away from the closed door, which he'd been staring at since she rang the doorbell. "You, too."

"I what?"

"You transferred from Italy for the mafia game, yeah? That's what I call serious dedication."

Azalya swallowed her contradiction. His frivolous interpretation of her life was hard to accept, but she preferred his illusion to reality. She wished it were a game, a sport to occupy her time during the day and then leave on the field before heading home. It wasn't though. The mafia was her life; it had never been anything less, never would be.

"Hey, you okay?"

"I'm going to be sick," she said. And she promptly was.

Yamamoto hovered as she doubled over puked her guts out onto Tsuna's mother's bushes. He picked up the bag, which she'd dropped in her haste to turn away. He laid a hand on her curved back. His voice was alarmed. "What's wrong?"

_Can't he tell by looking? _Azalya couldn't reply, though. Her stomach heaved again, but already empty, it only made her cough. Azalya spat in response, trying to clear her throat and mouth of the sour acid. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and her hand on her skirt. "I'm okay," she rasped, hating his worry.

The door opened then, and Tsuna yelped when he saw her bent over the front steps. "What's going-" his words were cut off by the sound of gurgling and choking, then the splatter of vomit hitting wooden floorboards. The throw up virus was dangerously contagious.

"Ack, Tsuna!" his mother yelled from inside the house. "Can't you at least do that in the bathroom? We're expecting guests, you know?"

"Kaa-san, the guests just puked in your yard," Tsuna called back, oblivious to Azalya's warning glare.

"This no good son, can't even look at puke without puking," they heard her complain before the woosh of running water drowned her out.

Azalya straightened, checking her uniform to make sure she hadn't accidentally gotten vomit on it. "Sorry," she said to Tsuna without meeting his eyes. She could feel her cheeks burning with humiliation. Despite the street lights, it was getting darker. Maybe they couldn't see how red her face was.

Tsuna did his best to look anywhere but her, what had formerly been their dinners, and Yamamoto. He winded up staring uneasily at her chin. "It's, ah, my mom'll clean it up, so..." He glanced down at the pool of vomit at his feet and clamped his hands over his mouth. He kicked the door shut and, presumably, ran for the bathroom.

"Guess we'll wait here," Yamamoto shrugged. "You wanna sit down?"

She sat on the steps, but it was more like she let her legs fold and the cement catch her. "Sorry," she apologized again.

They were downwind. He didn't say, "Whoa, what a stench" or suggest that they move. Maybe he didn't think she was capable of walking. "You should skip practice tomorrow," was his advice.

_What does practice have to do with anything?_ she thought, not following.

"You shouldn't push yourself so hard—it's bad for your health." Though Yamamoto didn't say it aloud, Azalya suspected he'd followed that with _You're still a girl, you know?_ in his mind.

"It isn't practice. It's... probably ate something," she lied.

"When I broke my arm, I didn't play for a month," he offered, clearly trying to make her feel better. "Cap'n let me manage the team for a bit, keep me involved, you know? We can ask him tomorrow if—"

"It's not about baseball!" she interrupted him. She realized she sounded too annoyed, too defensive, and forced a smile. "Just stress. I'll be fine tomorrow."

"You sure?" He sounded dubious.

"I'm sure," Azalya said firmly. Then she joked, "Don't worry about me. I'm pretty tough. The Cavallone Family doesn't accept weaklings." _Unlike your Vongola_, she added mentally.

He chuckled, as she'd known he would. "Sure. Your boss has good taste in family members."

She would have asked him what he meant by that, but then Tsuna's mom emerged from the back yard armed with a hose, and they scrambled away quickly from the jets of water cleaning the bushes.

"Why don't you guys go in through the back?" Tsuna's mom suggested nicely as she knocked the pink flowers off the poor bush.

"'Kay," Yamamoto agreed, ushering her towards the backyard. He still had a hold of her bag, and as he pushed her gently toward the screen door, she suddenly realized that his warm hand hadn't left the area between her shoulder blades.

Azalya gulped. Not because she felt like throwing up again, though there was some unexpected activity in her empty stomach. It was the way she'd once felt right before difficult assignments. A thrill. A buzz.

_...Shit._

_

* * *

_

**[1]** Pocari is a sports drink. Think Gatorade or Red Bull. Personally, I can't stand them. Water for me!

**Bahahaha~**

Didn't I say I was going to update TSF next? FAIL. I fail at life... that's right. :/ Fail at writing, too. Is this a fail chapter? I sort of like it. I dunno if I'm going about it the right way, though. Do you have any suggestions/critiques/complaints? I dunno. So, I've never had a boyfriend, so I don't know what people actually do. I'm lame like that. I want to leave a couple of things open ended, but I don't know if it's working. Is it? What do you think about the direction this chapter is taking?

Thanks for reading, you awesome people! Increase your awesomeness by leaving some feedback, please -heart-

And for anyone that cares, I registered for classes this week! Wanna know my schedule?

Intro to anthropology, honors general chemistry (and lab), Spanish conversation and grammar, applied linear algebra, first year experience: mind, body, and spirit!  
I can't wait! Anthropology sounds so interesting. Even though there's about 100 people in the class... I can't wait!


	12. Lessons to Learn

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was doing so well with the whole regular updating thing and then... Well... I haven't been in the mood to write the scenes I'd dreamed up (no, I wrote some truly dark and depressing bits of TFS instead...) By way of explanation, let me just tell you that there's been some dorama among my friends. Sadly. I'll try hard this time to stay on task and not get distracted by writing bits of stories that may never make it into the actual story. Hahaha... Sorry about this rant, just wanted to explain myself. Anyways, on to the story!

**Recap**:_ After a long, hard day of junior high school and baseball, Azalya goes on to her next chore: Tsuna. She more or less runs into Yamamoto on the yellow brick road, and they have a pleasant conversation. Until she upchucks on Tsuna's welcome mat. Off-screen freshening up (ew, puke breath) and then off to see the wizard that will grant Tsuna heart, courage, and brains. He is severely lacking in all fields. _

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 12: Lessons to Learn**

"It's closed," Tsuna observed as they came upon the dimly lit entrance to the shooting range.

She resisted the urge to roll her pale eyes as she unlocked the dirty glass door and switched on the lights. "Yes," Azalya said with the controlled tone of a teacher talking to a particularly stupid student, "I saw the sign. The building closes at eight, but my friend is related to the manager. I often come here after hours."

His face said he doubted that. His face said that he very much suspected that she'd threatened the manager's relative or held her for ransom, worse yet, that she'd killed the manager and his entire extended family. And she was supposed to teach a boy with a solid bias against the Mafia how great it was to be family. _And _she was supposed to teach him how to use the most iconic weapon in Mafia history.

She sighed and grabbed a two pairs of protective earmuffs from a bin. "You'll want this," she told him, tossing one (underhand, of course) in his direction and watching him fumble with it like an American football in P.E. Turning her back on the spectacle of uncoordination, Azalya swung her fat duffel bag onto a table and unzipped it. From the party of lumpy objects within, she drew out an oblong black case that could have passed for a clarinet case.

Tsuna leaned down over her, staring at the case. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and confusion. He'd probably guessed what it was, or knew subconsciously, or his body wouldn't have tensed, ready to flee. "Bazooka?" he breathed, as though he didn't have enough common sense to know any better. Then again, Azalya thought, he probably didn't.

As she opened it to reveal a small handgun, magazine, and two clips encased in foam, she explained, "There has been a trend toward compact weapons and portable ones that can be assembled quickly. No one carries bazookas around in guitar cases anymore."

"Like in the spy movies," he mumbled.

"It's not as easy as they make it look in film," she warned. The sheer impossibility of the stories and characters depicted in spy movies (not to mention the inevitably negative portrayal of the Mafia) aggravated her. She very much doubted that the producers, writers, and actors had ever held a gun, let alone used one. "This is just an old gun I had lying around," Azalya said. "It's functional, but heavier and bulkier than the one you saw at the hospital." To compare, she pulled her gun out of her school bag.

Tsuna barely pointed his eyes in their direction. "Yeah. I see."

_**Teaching **__isn't as easy as they make it look_, she lamented. How did her teachers force the multitude of apathetic students to pay attention? No wonder Reborn got violent all the time. "I'm assuming that, with the exception of Reborn, you haven't seen anyone fire a gun?"

"Er... Not really."

"Okay. That's fine. You'll be doing that a lot for the next few days."

"Er... _What _will I be doing?"

"Watching." To emphasize that fact, she snapped the lid of the clarinet-comme-weapon case closed. Checking her own gun thoroughly for any defects, she told him, offhand, "Put on your earmuffs and make yourself comfortable. Pay attention to form."

Looking sad and defeated, Tsuna covered his ears and waited.

Azalya blocked out his intrusive presence behind her. Pretending this was only another typical day at the firing range was the best method to deal with her impossible task. She raised the gun, flicked off the safety, and fired once at the oval target's center. She pumped the trigger until the clip emptied, then reloaded and started again. She fired steadily. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

It was nearly ten when Azalya finally lowered the gun, and only then because she felt her pocket vibrating. She uncovered one ear, switched her gun to the other hand, and pulled out her phone. "_Pronto_?" she answered it.

"Aza, it's me," Dino's voice replied urgently. "Listen... Can you talk?"

Azalya glanced at Tsuna, who was doing his best to look in a different direction and look disinterested. "What's wrong?" she asked, sticking to Italian on the off chance that he could eavesdrop through the earmuffs.

"I'm sorry. I know you're hurt, but I have to get back to Italy. It's about the Vongola succession. Don't tell Tsuna, but there may be more than just a ceremony to deal with. It seems the boss and outside advisor have had a... a falling out, most likely regarding the succession. The Ninth had agreed to wait a year until after Tsuna's training ends to see if Tsuna gained the qualities to be a boss, but he's gone back on that decision."

Dino's ambiguous report cranked her anxiety level up a few notches. Her voice strained from the inability to breath, Azalya asked, "He's not naming Xanxus his heir, is he?"

"He's viewing Xanxus more favorably recently, or so it seems. I don't know because the Vongola haven't released any information yet to outsiders. The Consigliere can't contain the situation much longer. Any more and the other families are going to become suspicious."

Azalya exhaled slowly and heard it through the phone as an agitated rush of static. "What is the Vongola Ninth doing? Is he trying to destroy the Alliance?"

"We don't know anything," Dino said. And it was clear that this unprecedented lack of insight into the Vongola's affairs troubled him. "It's complicated," he apologized. "Aza, it's complicated."

"Don't tell me that. I know, but..." She peeled the earmuffs from her head and threw them into the bin with more force than necessary. On the verge of a temper tantrum, feeling the urge to yell bubbling close to the surface, Azalya shut her eyes and took several deep breaths. "I know, okay?"

"But you're at a difficult age, huh?" he joked. More seriously, Dino added, "I am sorry, you know. It's just..."

"Duty calls," she supplied when he trailed off. "I'm fine. I understand. The damn Vongola take priority."

"It's complicated," he repeated tiredly.

His exhaustion guilted her into hiding her discontent. It was _Dino_, the boss, who was compelled to forever defer to the Vongola. He was the one required to hop on a plane at a phone call. Drop everything and visit Japan to evaluate the Vongola heir; put his own problems on hold and test the loyalty of the heir's family; juggle his obligations to the Cavallone and the Alliance to meet the Vongola's unreasonable demands. He was the Cavallone boss. He had to be under infinitely more stress than her.

"And I'm not helping by being immature," Azalya admitted. It was hard to say. Knowing the way other girls her age reacted to anger and disappointment, seeing how Tsuna's family exploded with emotion at the slightest provocation, it was becoming increasingly hard to keep up her controlled front. She had to keep pretending. Her family had enough troubles without an angsty teenager. "I understand that you have to go. Can we meet? Where are you now?"

"Ah, that..." Dino said, sounding embarrassed. "I'm on the plane."

"Oh," she responded in what was, in her opinion, at least, a perfectly level and restrained tone. She would_ not_ whine and complain that he hadn't even bothered to say goodbye in person. He was in a hurry. It was only to be expected and accepted. "Well. Good luck. I'll keep you updated on this end."

Sensing a farewell in her last sentence, Dino put in quickly, "About that, about talking to Tsuna. Have you mentioned Xanxus at all?"

"No." Again, Azalya turned her head towards Tsuna. He looked oblivious, as always. Quietly, though there was no way he could understand, she asked, "Do you think we should keep lying to him? He doesn't ask, but... "

"Tsuna may forfeit his right if he knows there is another heir," Dino considered.

"He isn't the type to put his dying will into competing against a rival," she agreed. "But this way... he's at a disadvantage if Xanxus makes his move."

"Aza, this is surprising. Are you defending Tsuna's claim to the Vongola?"

"No," she said quickly. "But to make it fair... He's weak, but... After Rokudo Mukuro... I could potentially see how he may have potential... He's _definitely_ nowhere near ready," Azalya emphasized clumsily. She knew Dino was teasing her, and she didn't like it.

"Whatever's convinced you otherwise, I'm glad."

"I haven't been convinced of anything," she stubbornly persisted. "Whether or not Tsuna and his ragamuffin family have any reasonable chance against Xanxus remains to be seen. Until then, it's just family policy."

Dino reprimanded, "Don't say it like that. If the Ninth chooses Xanxus, there's nothing we can do."

Azalya let silence (or the sound of crackling static) reign over their conversation. Then, when she was satisfied with the pregnant pause, she suggested, "We could withdraw from the Alliance."

"_What?_"

"The Gambero and Ragno families would follow us—they never sat well with Xanxus—and the Nuevo family might leave if we gave them the right incentives. The Tomosa and Bovino families are weak, but they're already allied with Tsuna. It would give us more leverage to gather families to boycott the Vongola."

"To what end? A Third Mafia War? Azalya, Xanxus wouldn't care who opposed him internally or how much outside pressure there might be. He isn't leader of the Varia for nothing. All we would achieve by withdrawing is greater conflict. Worse yet, civilians would be caught in the crossfire. You know better than to talk like that."

Azalya kneaded her forehead. Dino was right. They couldn't win against Xanxus in open confrontation. "Then we have to prepare Tsuna for the worst," she said resignedly.

"I'll leave it up to you to talk him around."

"I'll do my best," she promised.

After hanging up, Azalya ignored Tsuna while she wiped her gun clean with an old cloth and packed everything away. There wasn't much, just settling the case back into the duffel bag, but Azalya took her time making sure the area was immaculately tidy. She worked in silence, removing all traces of their visit from the chipped wooden table while Tsuna stared. The manager had never told her to clean up after herself, but anything she left out of place would be blamed on the poor janitors.

"That was a long phone call," he said, finally breaking the silence.

"Yes. It isn't anything to concern you, just family issues."

"My family is pretty messed up, too," he said consolingly.

_If only you knew..._

"My dad hasn't even been around for two years. And there's a bunch of freeloaders at... oh," he said, catching on when she shot him a look, "_that_ family."

She couldn't help but chuckle as she gathered her bags and led him out of the firing range. "Yes, Tsuna, that family."

"_That_ family," he mumbled unenthusiastically. He sighed deeply, contemplating the troubles of being an heir to a mafia family. If he knew half the story, he'd just drop on the spot.

"You are lucky to have family members so loyal to you," she said of Gokudera's unnatural attachment. "It's the sign of"—she choked on the compliment but managed to continue—"the sign of a strong boss."

"I'm not going to be a boss," he objected.

Azalya looked away, ostensibly to close and lock the front doors. "Have you thought about what I said?"

"Yes, but... it's way too big! There's no way I can lead a mafia family! I've never led anyone in anything!"

"That is entirely inaccurate. You led your family, your friends, against Rokudo Mukuro."

"But that was..."

"Reborn helped you, yes, but as boss, there will be no shortage of advisors for you."

"But the thing with Mukuro.. I never want to do something like that again!"

"The life of a mafia boss is not just conflict. There are benefits. You remember Mafia Land, don't you?"

"I remember it was attacked while I was there! They went ballistic, all shooting each other up. I couldn't do something like that. Ever." He glanced sidelong at her as he said this, and his brown eyes seemed to ask a very personal question.

Azalya pretended not to notice. "I know what you think about the mafia, but it's different depending on the person. I'm not a foot soldier in the Cavallone Family. I'm... well, I guess you could call me a spy. Or an advisor. I gather intelligence. I organize information. I try to help Dino make a decision."

Tsuna gaped at her. She might have just declared herself the queen of England. "Are you… gathering information on _me_? What _for_?"

She almost scoffed. Vongola arrogance. "Dino placed me here because I have an ability to fly under the radar. Honestly, before this June, had you noticed me?"

"Ah... Yamamoto-kun mentioned you once or twice, I think, but..."

Since he didn't have anything else to say, Azalya went on unforgivingly, "You didn't make the connection to the Cavallone. You didn't even realize we were in the same class, and that was the point. Well, you may as well know, now. My job was just to watch. If anything unusual happened, to report to Dino. I didn't intend to... to interact with you or your family, but after Reborn shot me with the Dying Will bullet..." she let the sentence rest incomplete, chagrined at her failure to remain on the sidelines even though it wasn't strictly her fault. And then there was the public conflict with Gokudera in homeroom and Yamamoto's invitation to join the baseball team... and her role as an undercover babysitter had really fallen apart. But if she'd only been able to observe from afar, Azalya never would have noticed the small details (or perhaps she would have written them off) that indicated maybe, just maybe, Tsuna had the potential to be a good boss to the Vongola.

"What!" His voice was just shy of a screech. Any higher in pitch and it'd have entered the supersonic range. "But if _you_ are here... Lambo and I-pin and Longchamp... other families... spies..."

From his nonsensical fragmented speech, Azalya was able to guess his concern. Frankly, she was almost impressed. "Few families are aware that the line of the Vongola succession reaches you. The ones who do know may be trusted. That's why when Rokudo Mukuro attacked, we suspected-" Azalya cut herself off on the edge of revealing Chiara. She cleared her throat and surmised, "Well, the situation is different now. I will be teaching you. That's my new task."

To her surprise, Tsuna turned to her and held out his hand. He looked awkward, walking forward with the upper half of his body twisted and his arm reaching out and his eyes pointing in a different direction. "If we'll be seeing a lot of each other," he mumbled to a street light, "let's, uh, get along well. Uh, I mean, be friends, like. Or... something."

They shook. Compared to her firm grip, Tsuna's was (appropriately) a limp fish. He'd have to work on that in the future.

He turned away quickly, pulling his hand back. "See you," he said to the asphalt.

She almost agreed. Exhausted, Azalya wanted nothing more than to collapse on her bed and sleep for a week. But based on Dino's phone call, Tsuna was in more danger than ever and he didn't even know it. "I should go with you. Reborn," she invented by way of explanation, "may want a progress report."

"Yeah, okay..." Tsuna looked like he desperately wanted to say something more. She waited a few moments, but all he said in the end was, "Er."

* * *

**My Ranty Space**

So she's patched up that rocky relationship with Tsuna. Good for you, Azalya, good for you. You've made a new friend. Clearly, a very articulate friend. Reference chapter 2! I completely understand if you've forgotten what happened at the beginning (since it was about a year ago...) so rereading is in order... right? And of course, feedback. Right? Feedback? The brainfood of writers and artists everywhere :)

ANYWAYS

You, my dear readers, are collectively clamouring for Yamamoto. He's so popular. Does it looks like he likes our Aza? Does it look like Aza likes him, for that matter? O: What do you think? Tell me~  
Also, how do you think the Aza/Tsuna issue is playing out? Why do you think she's no longer dead set against him? (More like how did I depict this gradual change?)  
Finally... Aza and Dino... they've been having some pretty serious conversations recently, haven't they? Have their similarities and differences been overplayed? Is it too much?  
Speaking of conversations, that's all that seems to be in this chapter... Well... I like dialogue. ^-^; I hope you do, too.

Answer any of my questions or say anything at all, and I will love you FOREVER -heart-


	13. Revelations

_In light of the indecently long hiatus, lemme just start by giving you a brief, non-exhaustive recap of the whole series that, like sparknotes, is not meant to substitute the real deal. Azalya Cavallone, Dino's younger cousin and self-proclaimed right-hand (wo)man has transferred to Namimori on his orders to babysit the useless Vongola heir. Unlike her boss, she resents the Vongola Family's authority and scorns Tsuna as the next boss, and she treats the Tenth Vongola boss with heavy prejudice. A few months later, Azalya somehow makes friends with Yamamoto Takeshi, and despite her initial misgivings, she starts viewings Tsuna in a more positive light. When Tsuna's family defeats Rokudo Mukuro, rescuing her, she can't help but accept his right to the Vongola throne. Happy times are in store for the reconciled, if only it is that simple. While Azalya is shaking hands with her new friends, an old adversary stirs up trouble within her own family. Soon, Chiara Pazzo will leave the mysterious backstage darkness and step into the spotlight reserved for the villain..._

Uh... that's not the best summary, but I hope you get my point. Happy reading!

* * *

**Chapter 13: Revelations **or** The Thank-You Gift**

The fifteen minute speed walk from the shooting range to Tsuna's house was uneventful by all accounts. After Dino's ominous phone call, Azalya had expected troops and assassins—be they Chiara's or Xanxus or some hitherto unknown party's—to sprout from the ground. A flickering street light casting irregular, vaguely humanoid shadows had almost prompted her to tackle Tsuna to the asphalt. A drunk, college-aged couple made her hand twitch towards her gun. Azalya ushered Tsuna through the roads at top speed like the body guard to a top government official, and when the cozy, two-story houses on his block came into view, Tsuna was wheezing and dragging behind. She herded him the last few meters to his house and glared at the neighbor's cuddly Pomeranian as though she expected it to grow fangs and attack.

Tsuna unlocked his door and stumbled through the threshold with great relief. When his tired eyes fell on the short figure standing with purpose on the matte banister, his slack face tensed. His tutor's deadpan expression was as hard to read as always, but Tsuna sensed that his long night hadn't ended. "I'm tired," he protested, waving his hands through the air. "Seriously, Reborn, I'm so tired that my head'll explode just thinking about math!"

Reborn hopped down, and his polished black shoes landed lightly on the wooden floor. The tip of his fedora hat only reached Tsuna's thigh, but the baby kicked his student hard in the shins. "Don't complain. And keep your whiny voice down. Maman is sleeping upstairs."

As he danced clumsily away from his abusive tutor, Tsuna yelped, "Please, I just wanna sleep today! I'll study hard tomorrow, I promise."

Reborn was unmoved. He took hold of the blue tie swinging from Tsuna's neck and yanked the brunet upstairs like a leashed dog. "Your term end exams are in two weeks. As your home tutor, I must prepare you. I'd expel you for marks like yours, Mister Dead Last."

"S-Shut up," Tsuna choked out. "Let me go!"

Azalya had turned to leave, but Tsuna's dismal class ranking made her pause in the doorway. "How sad," she said loudly to the deserted street. "But I'm sure Kyoko will make new friends and have fun in our new class." She reached behind her and closed the door before Tsuna responded, but if the threat of separating with his beloved Kyoko-chan couldn't convince Tsuna to hit the books, only his tutor's violent methods could. And if his status as Namimori Junior High as the stupidest second year was any indication, he desperately needed study more than sleep. Not that Azalya didn't sympathize with him. Tired and injured and annoyed and weighed down by bags that might have carried bowling balls, she forced her long legs into a fast-paced jog.

"God, could I do with a smoke."

The thought came to her unbidden and unwelcome, and left her mouth before she could hold it back, carried out by a rush of breath as she exhaled. Instantly, shame washed over her more powerfully than the fatigue that hadn't left her body since before Mukuro's attack. "I am not," she announced to the front door of her complex as she unlocked it, "going to smoke. It's been almost a month since I quit."

The night guard dozing at the reception desk jerked awake at the sound of her resolute whisper. "Cavallone-san," he greeted sheepishly, "er, you're just getting back this late. Is everything all right? Do you need help with your bags?"

Azalya hoisted her dragging duffel bag higher and smiled at him before heading for the stairs, pointly ignoring his polite queries. There was no way to answer without lying.

_No, I don't want a cigarette_.

It might have been June all over again, a day or two after Dino tossed her pack of cigarettes under a moving car. But who'd ever heard of nicotine withdrawals reoccurring a month later? How was it possible to be so tired that every moment seemed to erode her mind and body a little more? Azalya nearly fell over the threshold, shedding her bags and shoes at the door and making a beeline for the dark blue couch. When her head sank into the couch and the fading scent of factory new-ness filled her nose, her eyes closed almost of their own accord.

"Aza-nee," a child's doleful voice whispered close to her ear.

Shock forced her heavy eyelids open, and Azalya twisted toward the speaker. "Fuuta," she mumbled weakly, recognizing the brown-haired, fair-skinned young boy and the outline of a huge book held against his chest in the weak yellow light shining in from the window. She switched on the living room lights. "What on Earth are you doing in my..." She glanced at the locked door and the security pad's innocently flashing LEDs. "How did you get it?"

Fuuta's lips curved into a huge smile that reduced his round eyes to half-circles. "It was hard," he marveled. "Aza-nee, you're top-ranked for security and caution among the mafia, did you know? It took me twenty minutes to get in."

A quick look at her watch told her that her spontaneous nap had cost her half an hour of precious time. She shut her eyes against the truth and groaned out of frustrated disappointment. There was so much to do, so many leads to investigate, so many incidents to cross-reference. There wasn't time for homework, let alone sleep.

"Aza-nee, are you all right?" Fuuta asked urgently.

Azalya looked at him and, again, didn't answer. "I'm guessing," she reasoned, "that if you determined enough to spend twenty minutes bypassing my security measures, you have something very important on your mind?"

"Oh," he said, and he sounded proud and delighted. "It's that I finally thought of how to thank you!"

Blank, Azalya shrugged, "Why do you need to thank me?"

Fuuta giggled like a child, one that hadn't been running from assailants wanting to take advantage of him ever since word of his powers had gotten out. "Silly, Aza-nee. You helped me escape from Mukuro. I really thought it was hopeless before you appeared."

"No," she corrected him. "I couldn't do anything about Rokudo Mukuro. If you want to thank someone, thank Tsuna and his family. Tsuna defeated Mukuro, and I"—Azalya found this hard to admit, despite her new friendship with Tsuna—"I didn't help anyone. I may have made things worse. I did, actually"

"But Aza-nee was the one who found him," he protested.

Bitterly, she explained to the coffee table, "Kyouya found him."

"You helped," Fuuta insisted stubbornly. "I know because I saw you there, in his mind. You helped me, _and_ Tsuna-nii helped me, and I want to show you something. Look!" Delicately, he laid the tome on the coffee table and opened it, seemingly at random.

Azalya stifled a gasp. The short list was titled _Donations to Chiara Pazzo_. The name heading the list registered on the tail of a paralyzing thunderbolt of proof that emptied her turbulent emotions and replaced them with clear, cold understanding. "Varia," she whispered, barely mouthing the word.

Fuuta's smile shivered, and he nodded. "I saw it last Friday by chance. I know it's new."

"How much?" she heard herself ask in a voice that was without affect or inflection.

"2.1 million euros."

The astronomical amount rang in her ears. _2.1 MILLION?_ "Fuuta..." Azalya didn't know what to say. Could she thank him for practically confirming the Cavallone Family's worst fears?

Fuuta looked almost afraid, hungry for approval. Their eye levels were equal now, as she was sitting, and he must have seen the ambivalence in her otherwise unreadable blue eyes. "Does it... help you?"

Fervently, she answered, "So much that I don't know what to do. If we can use this..."

The boy beamed, throwing his arms around her neck and squeezing tightly for a fraction of a second. "Good luck, Aza-nee!" he cheered as he picked up his book and scampered away. He disappeared into the guest bedroom, and she made a mental note to recheck those windows later. First, she had to take care of a more important issue.

On her phone, speed dial number 1 was Dino. She lifted the slim device to her ear and listened to the dial tone until she heard the staticy click of a call connecting.

"_Pronto?_" Dino's voice was amused. "Miss me already, Cuz?"

The situation didn't allow for the exchange of any pleasantries. "The Varia gave Chiara 2.1 million euros sometime this year," she announced without preamble. "She's conspiring with them. I know it."

"_What _did you say?" Dino exclaimed. His agitated voice was hushed forcibly, as though he were afraid of eavesdroppers. "Aza, if there's any evidence, I need to know now."

"Ranking Fuuta provided the information," she said. "There are other families financing her traitorous exploits that we may need to worry about. Unfortunately, it's just as we suspected. Chiara is—"

A loud, scratchy rustling noise cut her off mid-sentence. For a second, Azalya thought the service had dropped the call. When she heard a muffled female voice, completely unrecognizable save its insincerely cordial tone, she realized that Dino had covered the mouthpiece. Azalya bristled. What was he trying to hide from her?

"I just need a moment." Dino's words were clear enough but the only intelligible part of the other's response sounded like a laugh. After a series of crackles that meant Dino no longer needed to cover up his secret, Dino said with a tone of unreal calm, "Aza?"

A chronic suspicion taunted her paranoia with the worst case scenario. Could it be that Dino had hid the identity of the woman whose unpleasant laughter she'd heard briefly because she was the subject of their conversation? The possibility that such great danger loomed so close restricted her quick breaths. Someone had drained all the blood from her body and replaced it with liquid nitrogen. Azalya's heart pounded frantically, but she felt colder and number with each beat.

_Don't tell me… It can't be._

Logic refuted the fear of Azalya's instincts. Less than three hours had passed since Dino's call. The Cavallone's private jet was still at flight level in the airspace between Japan and Italy, which meant he was safe from everything but storm clouds and migrating birds. His theoretical security in the air, however, didn't convince her when juxtaposed against the potential of Chiara's schemes. If she were capable of orchestrating Rokudo Mukuro's unfeasible jailbreak, could she foment danger where Dino should have been safest? Could she reach Dino where Azalya couldn't?

Dino's pressing voice cut through the cloud of misgivings that hummed around her like gnats "Hello? Aza?"

"I spaced out," Azalya apologized, "and during such an important report. To summarize, the problem is developing exactly as feared. Chiara has the Varia behind her, now."

"Well, that explains how she knew," Dino muttered, so softly that Azalya strained to catch the bitter words.

"Knew what?" Azalya asked, curious and suspicious.

"Er... What?"

"What are you talking about?" she demanded huffily.

"What are _you_ talking about?" he countered.

Impatient with his childish antics, Azalya cut straight to the chase. "Dino, who are you with?"

Long seconds of white noise filled the intermission of their conversation, but Azalya imagined she heard the mechanical humming of Dino's brain at work as he debated how much to tell her. A sigh signaled the formation of his decision. "She's here. Chiara. She's on the plane with me. Or rather, I'm on her plane. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to keep you in the dark, should have known you'd work it out quickly. Chiara came to see me at the hotel two days ago. She said she was there to console me for having sided with the wrong heir and that the Ninth'd finally acknowledged Xanxus' destiny to inherit the Vongola Family. I still thought Tsuna had impressed the Ninth with his performance in defeating Mukuro. I could've started a ketchup factory with all the tomatoes the Ninth sent Tsuna as a reward, so I couldn't accept her claim. Even when she showed me a document by the Ninth recognizing Xanxus as the heir, I didn't want to believe it, but the Ninth's seal was burning on that paper. It was authentic. Her story was authentic, Aza. Aza? Aza? Are you listening to me?"

Mechanically, she replied at once, "Of course, I'm listening to you. Have I ever not, Boss? I'm the one who wants to know if you've heard even a single word of warning I've ever spoken."

Dino began, "It's not that I don't trust your judgment—"

"Let me guess: it's complicated?"

He sighed when he heard the venom in her voice. "It is," he said wearily.

"Why would you get in a plane with the snake who has been trying to kill you for the past three years?" she cried. "Why do you keep putting yourself in danger. Tell me; explain, please."

The Cavallone boss refused to lose his head as she had. Very calmly and reasonably, he expounded, "This evening, Chiara came back and told me to return to Italy. Somehow, she'd convinced Vongola guards to allow me in for an audience. Now, I'm sure she used the Varia's influence. The important thing is that the Ninth has refused to speak with any of us, Reborn included, since after Mukuro's capture. Having read that letter, I need to know what the old rascal is thinking. This might be the only chance to talk before the situation deteriorates. Even if," he added as an afterthought, "it's a trap."

"All right, that's great for Tsuna. You have me in Japan to keep an eye out for trouble while you head off to Italy with to try to root it out. You're looking out for the Vongola's future, but what about us? What will happen to the Cavallone Family if you…" her voice tapered off, and she swallowed hard.

Dino responded in a soothing murmur, "Go easy on me, Aza. If you chew me up like this, how can I face the Ninth with conviction? Will you give me your support for this?"

"I just don't understand why."

"It's because you don't know game theory," he said smugly.

Startled, Azalya dropped her accusatory tone and asked incredulously, "What does something like _that_ have to do with the Mafia?"

"A smart man named John Forbes Nash won a Nobel prize for his theory of non-cooperative equilibria. You may think it's absurd, but game theory correlates closely to a Mafia environment. Let's look at the Alliance. The strategies and choices best for an individual family aren't always best for the Alliance. On the other hand, if all members of the Alliance consider the others' welfares, every family can act in a way to benefit the Alliance and themselves at the expense of maximizing individual gain. If more Mafioso could strategize in Nash equilibria, I wonder if we could have avoided so many wars where bosses thought only of his or her own family."

Azalya's mouth had fallen open during his explanation. Her free hand curled into a fist in her lap. "That can't be right, Dino. It can't be. This isn't a game."

"I know it's hard. You'll understand someday."

"When I 'grow up'?" she suggested as a miserable attempt at humor.

"Yeah, exactly," Dino chuckled. "Until then, you'll just have to trust me."

The sound of his laugh made her smile though her throat burned. "I do," Azalya whispered. "But I worry about you, too. I worry so much."

"I'll be okay," Dino promised. "Keep Tsuna safe and take care of yourself. It's late and you've done enough today; go to sleep, Aza."

"You, too, Dino. Be careful."

"That goes without saying," he said cheerfully. "Sweet dreams, Aza."

* * *

**LSDKJFGWERMSD**

**[1] **... ... ... ...

Tell me, how long did you go looking for a footnote in the text? XD FOOLED YA! Eh, what can I say? I entertain easily...

Jeez, here's another chapter after a long, long, LONG hiatus. I'm trying to make things are 'realistic' as possible, but maybe I've overdone it. There's been a lot of dialog in a series that is really meant to be action. I can't help it; I'm peacefully inclined. Though I'm enjoying writing in an attempt to convince you readers of who the real 'good guys' are in KHR, I'm sure it won't make many people happy reading about it from Aza's POV. I like her, personally.

Anyway, maybe not the next chapter, but the one after should be tons of laughs... for me at least! I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much I enjoyed writing it! Feel free to leave me some reviews; I love'em! See ya next chapter -heart-


	14. Is This a Normal Life?

_Recap: Out of nowhere, Ranking Fuuta visits Azalya's apartment in the middle of the night, bearing a gift for her help with Mukuro that confirms Chiara's alliance with the Varia and the dangers they pose for the Cavallone Family and its rightful boss. Azalya calls Dino to impart this devastatingly final proof of her treachery but finds that he has disregarded all previous warnings and is flying back to Italy to meet with Vongola Nono by the courtesy of none other than his mortal enemy! Using game theory as a basis, Dino tries to garner her support, but it is clearly fallacy. However, taking into account the sad truth that Azalya is essentially powerless to help her boss given the extent of the situation, she is forced yet again to accept Dino's executive decision and do the best she can with the unprepared Vongola heir he's left in her hands.  
_

* * *

**Chapter 14: Is This a Normal Life?  
**

Bright summer morning sunlight filtering through the gaps in the window curtains woke Azalya at six before her alarm clock could fill the room with its abrasive clangs. Never one to laze about, the sleepy girl immediately rolled out of bed and into her morning routine. Like the typical junior high school student, in the morning, she showered, ate, brushed her teeth, and dressed–only with the efficiency of a soldier. After the mundane daily activities, Azalya began the rituals of a Mafioso. She switched on her computer, checking her inbox for any news from home while writing a brief report of the day before for Dino. It was seven when she put the computer to sleep and picked her bags up off the floor, much earlier than she usually left, but Azalya had a new detour to make before school.

When she reached intersection where turning right would take her to school, she headed left instead. To Azalya's credit, she strode straight past Takesushi and made a right. Unlike her hometown, Namimori's residential areas were built in a grid formation, and therefore, pathetically easy to navigate. She reached Tsuna's street in almost no time at all. In daylight, the people ambling by were less suspicious. Azalya recognized two girls hovering near Tsuna's house: one from her class, accompanied by an enormously fat dog that refused to budge from its comfortable seat on the sidewalk, and the other Tsuna's friend from the neighboring school. Azalya waved to both with false cheer as she approached the suburban home.

His mother answered the door almost immediately after the first knock. She wore a stained apron over her loose-fitting home clothes and an expression of bewilderment to seeing a young woman on her doorstep. Recovering herself and smiling, she welcomed, "You're… Azalya-chan from yesterday, right? Come in and sit down. Do you want some breakfast? The rice just finished cooking. Tsuna," she hollered up the stairs, "your friend is here!" Beckoning Azalya in and pushing her in the direction of the dining room, she called out, "Tsuna, did you hear me?"

"Okay, okay," Tsuna squealed.

Once inside, she remembered her manners. "_Ojamashimasu_," Azalya murmured belatedly, and Tsuna's mom beamed at her. **[1]**

"Exchange students these days are so well cultured! Go on, eat!"

When Azalya entered the dining room, she saw more bodies crammed around the rectangular wooden table that a physicist could have calculated. Yamamoto, Gokudera, Bianchi, Reborn, I-pin, and Lambo were gathered around a table meant to seat four.

Yamamoto, Gokudera, I-pin, and Lambo seemed to be arguing about a plate of purple rice that bubbled ominously, giving off noxious fumes. The two children, one with almost no hair save a single braid and the other with far too much hair, were trying to feed bits of it to each other and yelling playfully. Bianchi, half her face hidden by a butterfly mask, was happily "improving" the other dishes on the table. Reborn simply sat there, eating without a sign of having heard the commotion around him.

Lambo was the first to notice her. "Why's the ugly fat girl here?" he questioned in his aggravatingly loud whine. "If you're hungry, eat this!" Picking up a glob of poisoned rice with his cow-patterned hand, he lobed it at her face.

Azalya sidestepped his attack easily, and the rice bomb splattered against the floral wallpaper.

The others, excluding Reborn and Bianchi, looked up then.

"The annoying brat's first good idea!" Gokudera declared with a glint in his silver eyes, and he urged Lambo, "Try again!"

"Heya, Azalya." Yamamoto grinned and intervened. "Only bad kids waste food," he scolded, lifting the plate out of Lambo's reach.

"It's not food. It's poo!" screeched Lambo. "Lambo-san wants to play catch with it!"

"Catch? All right!" Yamamoto drew back his arm, eyes narrowed at the child dancing and hopping with outstretched hands.

"Poo catch, poo catch—Mmmpff!" Lambo yowled, rice and pieces of broken porcelain dribbling off his dampened afro. "Lambo-san out!" he cried out piteously, and promptly he keeled over, the effect of Bianchi's poison cooking.

Gokudera positively glowed at the small, motionless body lying in a puddle of what had once been food. "Good job, Sis and Yamamoto!"

Yamamoto scratched a mosquito bite on his face. "Oops," he said. "Poor little guy."

"Now it's _quiet_," Gokudera said with shameless triumph. "Too bad the 'ugly fat girl' is still here to bother us."

Bianchi suddenly rounded on the silver-haired young man. "What did you say about your beautiful elder sister, Hayato?" she demanded, hoisting him out of his seat with unhand and pulling the mask off with the other.

"Bleargh," Gokudera sputtered, convulsing at the sight of his beautiful elder sister's face. He joined Lambo on the floor in the world of unconsciousness.

"What in the—!" Tsuna had come up behind her, and his shocked exclamation caught all the whole room's attention. "Reborn," he wailed, observing the mess on the walls, floor, and table, "why didn't you stop them?"

Reborn hopped off his stool, ignoring his young charge. "_Gochisousama_." He walked away from the table, and Bianchi trailed after him like a love-sick puppy, leaving only the three teenagers to clean up.

"I'm gonna be so late…" Tsuna complained with dread, uselessly wiping the rice stuck to the wallpaper with a dishcloth. "Mawabi-sensei'll murder me…"

"If the Tenth is late, then as his right-hand man, I won't even show up," Gokudera said with unnecessary fervor.

"That's not good, Gokudera-kun. You gotta go for the lab practical."

"I'll transmit the answers to you telepathically!"

What a bunch of idiots. Only I-pin, chattering happily in Chinese while circling Lambo, didn't exasperate her. She pitied Tsuna's mother, who thanklessly had to cook and clean and babysit so many freeloaders.

Azalya wandered into the kitchen, spied a mop hidden in the corner, and carried it to the dining room where she used it to attack the stain on the floor.

Yamamoto said in a satisfied manner, "I knew you had good sportsmanship. Hey, you," he directed at Gokudera, "let's help, too. Then we can all get to class a little earlier."

* * *

"Hey, No Good Tsuna, catch _this_!"

"_Oof!"_

Azalya's sharp ears caught the derisive jeers coming from behind the gym over the talk and laughter in the storage room as she deposited a bag of footballs in the metal bin. Helpful students carting in the goal posts from the field blocked the doorway, so Azalya skirted around the girls gossiping in the corner and pushed open the heavy green door labeled EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. The exit led her straight to the scene of the crime, and she jumped out in time to snatch a skillfully kicked soccer ball out of the air.

The three sweaty classmates gaped at her. She recognized the motley crew as Shou, Daisuke, and Takumi, to whom she'd never spoken but knew by reputation as troublemakers worse than the sort she used to be. "Whaddya want?" Shou, on the right, grumbled. "Give us our ball back."

Azalya dropped the football, then kicked it up again with her foot. It curved gently into Shou's outstretched hands. "Actually, it's the school's ball, and class is already over, boys," she said authoritatively to the bullies. "Don't you think you ought to run the ball inside instead of running out back here to play?"

"Play? That useless fishstick can't save a ball to save his fucking life," Daisuke sneered.

"Maybe not," Azalya concurred, recalling Tsuna's typical gym class as loser goalie that had allowed the opposing team to score on every shot. "Though I don't think his lack of skill in the goal really warrants a beating. Why don't you apologize to Tsuna, and we'll all go clean up."

"Don't make him apologize," Tsuna prayed from behind her.

"Like hell I will," he spat. Stepping forward, out of the triangle formation to confront her, Daisuke seized the ball from his friend. "And seeing's how it's none of your business… Think fast," he barked, feinting a throw at her face. When she didn't so much as flinch, he tossed the ball back with a frown and drew closer until they were eye-to-eye. Looking his meanest with his eyebrows furrowed and his pierced lip (against school regulations) pulled back in a snarl, Daisuke tauntingly flipped her ponytail over her shoulder so a few strands of hair whipped her in the face. "I don't hit little girls, so buzz off."

Then his eyes went wide with shock, and his lame attempt at a menacing growl evolved into a sharp yelp as Azalya reached out and twisted the offending limb behind his back with a quick, practiced ease.

Daisuke fell to his knees, face and body contorted as he struggled to free himself. "Lemme go, bitch!"

"_That's_ not a very polite way to ask," she said, raising her foot above the hand splayed out on the cracked concrete. "Would you like to try again?"

Daisuke's wary black eyes focused on her white sneaker and drifted up her leg, gauging how much strength the skinny body disguised. "Let me go," he mumbled.

"I think you skipped an apology."

"Sorry," Daisuke said shortly. "Now let me up."

"Do I hear a please?" she asked sternly.

"Let me up, _please_, Cavallone," Daisuke said, his humiliation written plainly on his red face.

Azalya obliged, helping the bully to his feet instead of pushing his face into the cement, as she was sorely tempted to. "That's still rude but better," she chirped. "Take that ball back inside, boys, and I'll take Tsuna to the nurse."

Daisuke looked ready to try his luck with a protest, but Shou and Takumi took one look at her smile and dragged their friend away. "I'll get you," he promised, his empty threat eliciting a soft sigh from the girl.

"How childish to hit someone over a lost game," Azalya commented, examining the damage done to Tsuna's face.

Thanks to Azalya's impeccable timing, he was more tousled than hurt. The injuries the three bullies had managed to inflict before Azalya's intervention were minor: a bruised cheek, puffy lips, and scraped elbows that oozed blood.

"Come on, Tsuna," she said bracingly. "I'll walk you to the nurse's office."

Don't bother. It's no big deal," Tsuna mumbled through his swelling lips. "It happens all the time. I'll just go to class…"

"Sensei won't care if we're a little late."

"Are you kidding me? Mawabi-Sensei'll flip out!"

Azalya laid a restraining hand on his shoulder as he slouched past. "Let's—"

The crash of a metal door smashing against a brick wall and a frantic bellow of "Tenth!" cut her off. Gokudera didn't pause for a millisecond when his silver eyes fell on her, and she saw the misinterpretation clearly in the blaze of anger that lit them. He lunged and grabbed her by the collar with his left hand while his right went for his bombs. "You wanna die?" he growled.

"_Heee!_" squealed Tsuna. "Wait a sec, Gokudera-kun! Azalya-san didn't…!"

Frozen in the act of lighting a stick of dynamite, Tsuna's loyal lackey glanced at him, confusion and disappointment evident on his face. He _wanted _to fight her. "Er, Tenth?"

Azalya freed herself from his slackened grip and smoothed out her disheveled white t-shirt. "Now that Hayato's here, I'm going to go and change. Keep a closer eye on your boss."

"You—!"

Ignoring his griping, Azalya headed off towards the locker rooms without another word to either of them.

True to Daisuke's threat, Azalya ran into more trouble straight after P.E., trying to persuade Mawabi against giving her supplementary reading on top of detention for lateness. The strict teacher still hadn't quite forgiven her truant student for the weeklong absence or her tardiness that morning and, though she dropped the thick book back on her desk, would not be deterred from assigning Azalya cleaning duty after school.

Daisuke smirked at her as she walked back to her seat in defeat.

The teacher's ire found a new target before starting the class: Hayato and Tsuna, who'd attempted to sneak in while Mawabi was occupied. "You two," she barked at them, "can scrub the mold from the pool walls, and Cavallone-san can scrape bird excretions from the roof. Come see me in the office after school."

"You're outta your mind, lady," Gokudera scowled, kicking over his chair. "As if I'd stay for your shit." And he stomped out.

Mawabi glared at her student's back but made no move to stop him. With the class entirely silent, the teacher's eyes roved over each shocked teenager, gazing levelly at Azalya and Tsuna for a moment longer as if daring them to follow Gokudera's example. Neither moved from their seats, and Mawabi finally turned back to the board and began the day's lesson.

* * *

"_I_ think," Seiko said with supreme superiority, "that whenever you get involved with No Good Tsuna, you get in trouble."

"That's not right," Hana said fairly. "Azalya gets in plenty of trouble on her own."

"No Good Tsuna always makes things worse for everyone!"

Azalya turned on her friend seriously. "Don't call him that. You're better than those bullies."

"Okay, I'm _sorry_. But we were going to go kimono shopping after school today," Seiko wailed. "The Tanabata festival is this weekend, and Asa-chan has nothing to wear!"

"It's probably going to rain this weekend, anyways," Azalya said, returning her attention to her sandwich dismissively. Wasn't she far too busy for frivolous, girly things like shopping and festivals?

"No, no, don't say that," Seiko cried, flapping her hands at Azalya in dismay. "I feel so bad for Orihime. And the festival is the perfect time for you and Yamamoto-kun to…" Seiko's loud voice trailed off. Azalya thought at first that her friend had finally decided to stop teasing her, but then Seiko shrieked, "Don't tell me you're defending Tsuna-kun because you want to go with him instead!" **[3]**

"What?" Kyoko, returning from serving lunch in the cafeteria, joined in surprise.

"Azalya wants to invite Tsuna to go with her to the Tanabata festival," Hana betrayed her friend by explaining.

Kyoko's brown eyes went wide with innocent shock. "But what about Yamamoto-kun?" she asked Azalya sadly. "Don't you like him anymore?"

"I'm not going with anyone," Azalya said firmly and patiently. "I'm too busy. And like Seiko said, I won't have anything to wear. Pity."

Kyoko offered, "My mom has lots of kimono."

"They won't fit me."

"Kimono fit everyone!"

"I can't wear them," Azalya insisted.

"Why not? My mom has good taste in clothes," Kyoko wheedled. "Doesn't she, Hana?"

Hana chewed on her mouthful of rice slowly. "Yeah. Don't you think Kyoko's clothes are cute? Her mom picks them out."

Stiffly, Azalya replied, "I can't say I've seen you out of your uniform."

"Oh my god," Seiko exclaimed. "You've been here for months and we still haven't done anything outside of school! That settles it; you're going to the festival."

"I'm busy—" Azalya started.

"On the _weekend_?"

"I'm busy everyday." She sighed.

"You're not working illegally are you?" Suddenly concerned, Seiko dropped her chopsticks and grabbed Azalya by the shoulders. "Is it money? You don't have enough to go?"

"I am quite sound, financially," she reassured Seiko. "But we have exams to study for and—"

"_You _are worrying about _exams_?" Hana raised her eyebrows.

"No, I'm not, but… I'm tutoring, uh, Yamamoto-kun, so…"

"He won't want to study on Tanabata! He's probably going with Tsuna-kun and that scary-face Gokudera. I'll go ask them now!"

"If you dare—" Azalya threatened, but Seiko bounded away fearlessly before the mafioso could list her impressive methods of torture. "Hide me," she implored Hana. "I'll die if you guys keep doing this."

Hana chuckled. She didn't tease Azalya as often as Seiko or Kyoko, but her interjections were usually the worse for that. "If you're bothered by it so much, it must mean you have _some_ feelings," she philosophized.

Azalya choked on her next bite and did not legitimize Hana's faulty logic with an answer.

After what seemed like a thousand years, Seiko skipped back towards their shaded area under the tree. She beamed at Azalya as she picked up her bento and chopsticks. "They're going! And don't worry, Seiko-sama asked so cleverly that Yamamoto-kun didn't suspect a thing. So what's your excuse now?"

Azalya resolutely turned her face away. "I am not going, and that is final."

"By the way, he wants to know why you didn't meet him in the library. What's going on that the best friend should know about?"

"Crap, I forgot I was supposed to tutor during lunch. I'll apologize before practice."

"You have cleaning duty because you were sneaking around with Tsuna-kun and scary-face," Seiko reminded. "Poor Yamamoto-kun—his girlfriend is always cheating on him."

"…I hate you."

* * *

After the last class ended with a flurry of motion—teachers rushing to leave their demon students behind and students hurrying to tidy up the room before club activities—Azalya closed her textbook with a sigh. "See you," she muttered to her friends as she headed towards the faculty room.

Mawabi was sitting on the couch with a book in her hands. She looked up to see Azalya standing in the doorway and smiled dryly.

Azalya saluted smartly. "Azaya Cavallone, reporting for duty."

"Good afternoon, Cavallone-kun." Mawabi fished a ring of keys out of her pocket and flicked through them until she found one labeled "Roof," which she pulled off and handed to the student (or slave). "Next time, don't be late."

Azalya accepted the key with an ironic smile. "But hey, I get to go to the roof, which is restricted access ever since Yamamoto-kun fell and broke his arm. So it's worth it."

"Cheeky brat. Hurry and go unless you want to clean windows tomorrow."

With a graceful curtsy and a grin to counter Mawabi's forced glower, Azalya left in search of a broom and dustpan. Despite her chirpy appearance, the last thing Azalya wanted to do was spend half an hour sweeping the roof. Who knew when it'd last been cleaned? There were probably piles of bird poop that the rain hadn't washed away. There were probably cigarette butts and—she shuddered to imagine it—evidence of unspeakable activities.

With a sigh, she unlocked the door leading to the roof and pushed it open. A gust of wind caught the heavy door immediately, sending it slamming against the outside wall. Her hair flew across her face, momentarily blinding her, and while she struggled to clear her eyes and mouth, she heard someone speak.

A low voice she hadn't expected dictated in a baleful murmur, "The roof is off-limits to students."

* * *

**My Favorite: Footnotes!**

**[1] **_Ojamashimasu  
_You say this when going into a person's house.  
**[2]** _Gochisousama  
_You say this when you're done eating.  
**[3] **The mythical lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi whom the Milky Way divides may meet once a year on July 7th (Tanabata). However, if it rains on Tanabata, the magpies that form the bridge that reunites the lovers will be unable to come. Check wikipedia for more information, if wanted :)

**The Q & A  
**

1. Will Azalya and Yamamoto get together!  
_Who can say? Keep reading to find out :)_  
2. How the hell was Azalya undercover if she skipped class, smoked, and picked fights? Did she think that was normal?  
_Erk. That's hard. I'll say that in my middle school experience, people like Tsuna and people like Azalya generally don't interact. She wasn't supposed to be a complete wallflower invisible to the whole school but just to be discreet enough that Tsuna himself wouldn't catch on. As for whether or not she thought that was normal student behavior... no, I don't think her perspective is quite so skewed. But we have to remember that as a high-ranking member of a powerful mafia family, Azalya is accustomed to authority despite her young age. Perhaps her rebellion is a manifestation of role loss? _[Goodness, stop me now... I hope you're not sorry you asked. ^-^;;;]

**Rants (Aren't I done yet?) ~**

Wow… this chapter turned out to be a lot longer then I thought it would be. And still managed to be very clippy... how did that happen? Some helpful reviews have even commented on that in the past, but I went back to my horrible ways...! Gaah~ Despite that, hope you enjoyed the chapter. Send any questions or comments my way! I always respond eventually lol...  
Also, can I take a quick moment to mention that I was so touched by how many of you read and reviewed the comeback chapter? I think I know how JKR feels when people line up to buy her HP books lol!

Most importantly, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Best wishes to all you lovely people whom I so appreciate :)


	15. For The Future

_**Recap:**__ Continuing the theme from the very first moment Azalya and Tsuna met, involving herself with the boy only brings more trouble. This time, Azalya's punished for stopping an incident of bullying and given cleaning duty after school, which isn't too bad in itself. But Tsuna's P.E. class blunders have the indirect consequence of leading her to an old adversary on the roof. She's still injured, pestered beyond endurance by a group of friends who are far too romance-oriented, and stretched to the limit of her formidable tolerance. So how will Azalya react to this chance encounter and the surprises in store this chapter?_

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 15: For The Future  
**

Azalya was looking straight into the pale, haughty, rabid face of the head of the Disciplinary Committee, the leader of the much-feared delinquents, and the number one strongest student of Namimori Junior High… Hibari Kyouya. **[1]**

What had she done to deserve this?

"Well?" There was a sneer in his cold, clipped tone.

Azalya almost groaned aloud. She resisted the urge to swat him upside the head with the wooden broomstick. She knew any such attempt would end in failure and an assisted flight from the roof with a gruesome landing. It wouldn't be smart to tempt fate.

In the span of about two seconds, he went from disinterested to annoyed. "I'll beat it out of you," he threatened.

Azalya fixed him with her best smile of calm composure. "I have permission from the proper authorities. I've been assigned cleaning duty, Kyouya," she announced clearly over the sound of the wind rattling the wire fencing encircling the building top. "I'm here to sweep up the trash that's gathered up here since it's been off-limits." She angled the splintery handle of the broom in his direction in an act of suicidal bravado. "Unless you'd like to do it."

Powder blue and steel grey eyes clashed.

"Is that so?" Amused now, he smirked. The black blazer he wore like a cape flared out behind him as he strode towards her. One step… two… three… he drew even with her… "And what's your alibi?"

The question startled and annoyed her. Hadn't she already told him? She planted her free hand on her hip and turned to scold him, but froze when a gruff male voice mumbled an unintelligible excuse.

A member of the breadhead gang stood discreetly at the top of the steps, his piggy black eyes widened to an almost normal size from the shock of confronting his leader.

"Speak up."

The order, still sounding amused and slightly agitated rather than angry, made the bulwark of humanity blanch nonetheless. "I saw her coming to the roof, Kyou-san. Do you want me to take care of this?" He did his best to look menacing but couldn't quite pull it off when even his square chin looked terrified of Hibari's displeasure.

Hibari's lips twisted into a smirk that revealed his poorly contained berserker instincts, and his minion retreated hastily. He aimed that same look of promises of pain briefly in her direction. And then he was gone.

Azalya turned and gaped at the metal door he'd shut so softly. Slowly, her open mouth curved into a huge smile. A warm, fuzzy feeling was expanding within in. It wasn't happiness, per se, more like satisfaction. Recently, she'd had too many failures, both when it came to Tsuna and Dino. Petty as this long-awaited victory was, she couldn't help stopping to relish the feeling.

Once she'd bottled the euphoric sense of victory, Azalya propped the dustpan against the closed door and got to work. Her attention quickly wandered away from the monotonous task and towards more important matters. She checked the matte black-banded watch on her left wrist, and her brain calculated the seven-hour time difference between Japan and Italy almost automatically. It would be around nine in the morning, late enough in the day for any number of crises to have arisen. Dino might have met the Ninth Vongola boss, or the capricious old man might have once again rejected the request for an audience. She contemplated Chiara's offer, which had to be taken with a grain of salt or else deemed inherently insincere.

Let alone the source, the route was suspicious in the first place. Why would Dino, boss of the Cavallone Family and long-time confident of Timoteo, need to rely on his (in)subordinate's alliance with the Vongola's elite assassination squad to speak with their leader? All the more strange that the surreptitious Varia seemed to have gained so much influence in the family while the consegliere had fallen from grace. What had caused Vongola Nono's abrupt volte-face? There were so many possibilities in the mafia. Bribery, blackmail... the list went on. But these, while they might have threatened the boss of a lesser family, shouldn't have affected the Vongola Family, even in its current weakened state.

The answer was simple, and it was potent, and it was indicative of the chaos to come: Chiara.

The premonition jolted Azalya out of her trance-like state. Despite the July heat, she shivered as the breeze dried the sweat beading on her face. The wind picked up the debris Azalya had collected into a neat pile, sweeping it off the edge of the roof in a dirty little cloud that left streaks on the concrete. With a sigh, Azalya cleared up the leftovers, retrieving the dustpan from where she'd left it. A perfunctory inspection revealed no further signs of dirtiness, and Azalya left the roof, wishing that dispelling Chiara's obstacles were as easy as cleaning the roof.

So distracted was she by the danger of Chiara's immoral schemes that she didn't immediately notice the voice calling out to her.

"Azalya. Hey,_ Azalya._"

She turned towards the sound and saw Yamamoto swaggering up from the athletics fields. By the confusion on his tanned face, it was obvious that he'd repeated her name four or five times already, wondering if she were ignoring him on purpose.

For what felt like an eternity, Azalya gazed at him blankly. He was all sweat-slicked hair, gleaming white grins, dirtied white t-shirt and shorts, youthful energy and animation. The foreignness of his plebeian essence struck her, a reality check straight out of left field, like being slapped in the face by one's best friend. Yamamoto was a baseball-loving, book-averse, normal young man playing at being a mafioso the way little boys played cops and robbers. _She_ was a mafioso, born and bred, pretending to be an ordinary junior high student. **[2]**

"You feeling bad again?" His grin became a frown of worry. No doubt Yamamoto was remembering the fool she'd made of herself in front of Tsuna's house. "Wanna go to the nurse?"

Azalya avoided looking at him, as if refusing to acknowledge the depth of his innocence would somehow save him from the tainting effects of the mafia. "I'm... It's fine. Thanks."

"Ya sure?"

She nodded in response and cleared her throat in an attempt to loosen the muscles that had tightened uncomfortably. Forcing herself to speak casually, she asked, "Aren't you supposed to be at practice?"

"Nah, it ended early. Tanaka had to take Cap'n to the nurse."

Azalya shook her head in a show of exasperation. "Don't tell me. Captain knocked himself out with his bat," she guessed.

"Whoa! You're a mind-reader," Yamamoto exclaimed. "_That's_ how you do so well on tests!"

She laughed and found to her surprise that it rose easily out of the knot of melancholy and anxiety twisting her stomach. "You caught me," she confessed. "All Italians are actually ESPers." Raising a slender index finger to her lips, she added in an undertone, "Shh... Keep it a secret, 'kay?"

"It's safe with me," he promised, grinning again.

Azalya suddenly became away of how stupid she must have looked with her finger pressed to her mouth. She smiled, hoping her awkward embarrassment wouldn't show on her face. "So..." she said slowly, "are you going home now?"

He shook his head. "I'm gonna get some more batting practice. Try and beat my old record. Wanna join?"

"I'll pass. My arm's still useless. Anyways..." She thought of Tsuna. "I have something to do."

* * *

Azalya leaned back against the warm brick wall in the shade of the empty building, watching the people walking the street for a short, skinny, spineless brunet. Every so often, her blue eyes flitted to her watch and her frown deepened. Their arrangement had been clear. After school, Tsuna was to return home with Gokudera and finish school work. At five, the silver-haired fan boy would escort Tsuna to the shooting range for his studies of another subject area entirely. Now, it was 5:30, and Azalya was growing impatient and slightly worried.

Then she spied him, the short figure slouching down the street. His large head hung low, practically hiding the expression that was part annoyance and part dread. As Tsuna walked, he dragged his feet to convey his displeasure. A bad idea, as it turned out. When the clumsy boy looked up to see her standing with a severe look on her face, he tripped over his own feet and would have fallen if a passerby hadn't grabbed him by the arm. Tsuna took one look at the nondescript black-uniformed boy, identified him as one of the Disciplinary Committee, and scurried to Azalya's side. Evidently, a mafioso was less terrifying than a simple delinquent.

To mask the anxiety that had brewed in her stomach, Azalya posed akimbo and asked, "Where's Hayato?

"He, er, went to go restock," Tsuna said with the uncertain air of someone whose own words scared him. "Reborn's taking a nap," he added, anticipating her next question.

Azalya shifted position and folded her arms. She couldn't believe how lightly this family treated the precarious security of its boss. If they cared, why would they let him walk the streets of Namimori alone? But it wasn't as though she was one to talk. _Her_ precious boss had entered the snake's nest without protection. All too aware of the threats a boss faced, Azalya advised, "Don't wander around alone, if you can help it. It's not safe. Don't you realize how vulnerable you are?"

"I thought the Vindice imprisoned Mukuro already," Tsuna said hesitantly. "Don't tell me he escaped again!"

Azalya sighed, regarding Tsuna's wide, soft brown eyes with pity for his ignorance. Despite—or perhaps because of—being the heir to the most powerful mafia family, he knew nothing. Azalya wasn't inclined to blame him for once. It was their fault, hers and Dino's, for sheltering him in spite of their opposition to Vongola Nono's methods. They should have known better than anyone that pretending the situation was different wouldn't change it. Their dealings with Chiara should have taught them that.

"As far as I know," Azalya replied slowly, choosing her words carefully, "you'd be right. Rokudo Mukuro and the other prisoners that attacked you are held in Vendicare, but he never was the biggest threat to you."

"What do you mean? There's worse?" Tsuna burst out. "This is exactly why I don't want to be a part of the mafia!"

"Calm down," Azalya ordered over his distraught cries. "Though you have reason to be concerned, it's no use getting worked up if you don't understand." She ran hand through her hair, combing the wavy locks out of her face and admitted, "I should have told you this earlier. I still don't know how to do it properly. Let's go inside and sit down first."

Tsuna was brave enough to attempt a halfhearted joke. "It's bad enough that I have to sit down, huh?"

She mustered a chuckle as she opened the door and felt the flow of air-conditioned air instantly dry out her eyes. "It's no laughing matter."

* * *

"So… basically," Tsuna summarized in a monotone, "this person is against a loser like me inheriting the Vongola Family, and she wants to kill me so the Ninth will choose a different heir?" There was a look of concentration on his face. He didn't seem to notice the sound of gunshots close by splitting the air.

"That's it in a nutshell," she agreed, forgiving his poor summary. She couldn't expect much from a student that regularly received D's. "You'd be the latest in the trend of assassinating Vongola heirs. Don't forget the previous three died suspiciously, and their murders were never solved."

"Did, er, _she_ kill them?" he asked nervously.

"Her name is Chiara Pazzo," Azalya repeated patiently, attributing his poor memory to the difficulty in remembering foreign names. "And she may have, yes, though I doubt even she could have accomplished that alone."

"And... Chiara-san is a mafioso and a member of the Cavallone Family?" Tsuna asked. "Like you?"

A sour look twisted her pretty face.

"Sorry," Tsuna apologized quickly. "Could you explain that part again?"

"She's a mafioso," Azalya allowed. "But the rest of what you said is actionable slander."

In fact, in a profession not know for its ethical probity and compassion, Chiara stood out as a merciless, mercurial bitch of a sore thumb. Her constant provocations and transgressions accounted for maybe 75% of the Cavallone Family's problems.

Sometimes, Azalya wondered what would happen if they simply did away with the instigator. But that was a last ditch sort of plan that Dino would never allow, especially now that Chiara was acting on her best behavior. That soft-heartedness was exactly why Chiara could find so many sympathizers outside the Vongola Family Alliance, in more radical groups.

"Azalya-san?" Tsuna watched, apprehensive brown eyes flicking over her taunt face.

Azalya forced herself to relax. Chiara's rebellion was more information than Tsuna needed. She'd even kept Xanxus secret out of respect for the Ninth. It was enough if Tsuna understood a little bit the constant danger he was in. She needed to conclude the little lecture to prevent spilling the beans. In a voice that might have passed for level, Azalya said pointedly, "I hope you understand why all of you have to be careful." Azalya stood and brushed off her skirt. "Okay, sorry for the digression. Let's get started."

"Wait," Tsuna said softly, and Azalya looked down at him. His forehead was creased, his eyebrows merging to form one thick unibrow. His thinking face was a look of constipation.

Briskly, suspecting he only wanted to further delay his lessons, she asked, "What is it? We're behind schedule."

"Isn't Dino-san also in danger?" he ventured, and the worry was evident in his large doe eyes. "If Chiara-san is one of the radical conservatives... Dino-san is the boss who cares most about civilians, Fuuta said. He's clumsy without his subordinates around. He's always coming 'round to help when Reborn says so. He acts like a real person. He's nice, too."

Azalya could only stare at him. Her pale blue eyes were wide, startled. She came to the full realization that Tsuna's concern for his own family had planted when Mukuro had been targeting his family. He may have been weak, slow, ignorant, and above all, naïve, but he was good. When Azalya responded in a whisper, she couldn't meet his eyes for fear that they'd betray her. "Yes. Dino is in danger."

"You're his right-hand man—I mean, woman—right? How come you're in Japan?"

His insightful query shocked her into silence. That was twice in as many minutes.

"I mean, besides today, Gokudera-kun usually sticks to me like gum to hair! Even peanut butter wouldn't get rid of him!" As he brought the conversation to more normal matters, his tone shifted to one of mild annoyance.

"Bad similes aside, you're right." Even when she'd described Chiara's atrocious habit of making trouble where none was needed, her voice had been steady and professional. Now, her words wavered, and her uncertainty was transparent. Azalya had always known Dino's reasons for stationing her in Japan to protect Tsuna rather than himself, but she'd never accepted them. Her obedience had been grudging at best. But now that she was forced to explain, she could almost see the logic behind Dino's decision.

"So then…?" Tsuna prompted.

"Dino should be fine," she stated in a flat tone that couldn't disguise how worried she was about his well-being. "He has many guards, and Romario is quite capable as a replacement. I'm not the conventional right-hand man Hayato tries to be because Dino believes that his safety is not the top priority, because Dino is investing in your future. Rather than have me protect him, I suppose you could say Dino has me safeguard _your_ potential."

He ogled at her in disbelief. "My potential?"

She raised and lowered one shoulder in a small shrug. "It's like I told you before. The Vongola Family isn't what it used to be. No, it'd be more accurate to say the mafia is corrupt as a whole. That degeneration of morals isn't something Dino wants to accept. You may not think Dino is ambitious; I know he doesn't look it. But with your impression of the mafia, you should understand the gravity of his goals. Yes, it's a risk, but if we survive, the future… Let's just say it's much brighter than if Chiara and her lot won."

Her eyes communicated a silent but clear question, a plea for him to support Dino's vision of the future. Rather, the peace he sought was an ideal of the past similar to Vongola Primo's. It wasn't Tsuna's obligation to inherit the founder's values in addition to his family—if, indeed, he chose that path—but Azalya finally felt, as Dino always had, that No Good Tsuna might change the mafia.

Tsuna lowered his gaze to his lap. "Oh," he murmured.

Azalya swallowed the coercions and persuasion on her tongue. Her job was to teach, not convince. "I think we better get started, so Reborn has time to tutor you afterwards," she declared. Ignoring his weak protests, Azalya reached into the bag at her feet and pulled out an old gun. "This is a High Standard Victor, .22LR," she informed him, forcing the pistol into his hand. "It's a good handgun for beginners, since it's a target type." Seeing his confusion, Azalya added, "It's for target shooting, not self-defense. Higher accuracy, less recoil and muzzle blast."

The brown-haired boy looked mildly sick, holding onto the gun gingerly as though afraid it might burn. "I don't think I'm ready," Tsuna whined frenetically. "Why can't I just watch you?"

She kept on going with their teacher-student act like she didn't notice his wheedling. "First, you need to slide back the safety. Push it with your thumb. The gun will recoil when you fire. Then, assuming you've loaded it correctly, the empty shell will drop out, and the next bullet will be ready to fire. This is a semi-automatic, so just release the trigger and pull it back for the second shot. You don't need to bother with the safety again. Do you understand?"

He mumbled something.

"Do you need me to repeat it?"

Tsuna shook his head miserably. "I understand... But I'd never be able to shoot a person."

"It's just practice," she encouraged bracingly. After the solemnity of their discussion, she didn't have the heart to add that someday, he might have to.

* * *

**[1] **Was that melodramatic or what? After that buildup, perhaps you were expecting more of their encounter...? Sorry!  
**[2] **hehehe couldn't resist the baseball pun ^-^;;

**Questions? Answers!**

On Azalya's class schedule.  
I've looked up how middle school schedules usually work in Japan, and suffice it to say... Azalya's is atypical. But oh well. Her day goes something like this: Homeroom, P.E., literature, chemistry, lunch, math, English, baseball club... when she goes to everything. Recently (her absence aside) I think Aza's been going to class more regularly. She'd turning into a good kid. Yay!

And a question for you: I think I rushed the Aza-Tsuna dialogue... What do you think of this new subplot (if it can be called that) and the way it was presented? Wait, maybe that's the main plot. I've decided to outline the next story I write.

**Excuses**

Urgh... inspiration left me half way through, if you could tell. There is less time-skipping, but more disorganization, and I'm totally aware of that. Yuck. Originally, I was looking at postponing this another week or so, but since classes start today, I think I'll just make do with this. It'd be a better idea to revise it a little more. But I, as many teenagers are, prefer instant gratification.

Neeways, I hope you liked this chapter. By all means, leave me a review. I love hearing your thoughts! It makes me feel like I'm not just talking to myself here... lol... See ya next week! (That's the plan, at least...)


	16. Schoolyard Incidents

_**Recap:**__After winning her one-sided match against Hibari on the roof, Azalya goes on to her afterschool duties. She runs into Yamamoto, with whom she chats for a bit before engaging in a more involved conversation with Tsuna. Against the wishes of the tyrannical Vongola Family, she explains a bit of danger he faces as a candidate for boss-hood and reveals the existence of arch-nemesis Chiara to immediate backlash from the reader community._

I'd like to point out that we've been exploring Aza's school life for quite some time. This is the six chapters so far over a period of about three days. If I ever rewrite this story, I promise to condense it into, like, two chapters.

* * *

**Chapter 16: Schoolyard Incidents  
**

"What the hell is this?"

Stony-faced, Azalya examined her empty shoe locker. No, that description was inaccurate. Rather, the indoor shoes that should have awaited her were gone. Scraps of paper littered the bottom. Azalya pulled a handful out, but before she could look at them more closely, a flash of falling silver and a light _clang!_ drew her gaze to the floor. Stooping down, she picked up a thin sliver of metal.

_A razor blade? _

Azalya pocketed it with a frown and reached cautiously into the locker. She already knew what to expect from the papers stuffed into it, and as she glanced through them, only the unoriginality of the letters disappointed her. Most of them had been ripped from notebooks or random fliers and composed with cut-out magazine letters, standard procedure for anonymous hate mail. Most said the same thing (_Die!_ or _Fuck you!_), and the few that revealed a smidgen of creativity could right be called poetry. Azalya's favorite was scribbled on what looked like a scrap torn from a planner and read _Die where you came from, guido!_

_Guido... _Jersey Shore _has done worse to the Italian image than Nintendo ever did. _She supposed it didn't matter that she was a pureblood Italian, not Italian-American. **[1]**

Azalya crumpled the papers dispassionately and tossed the ball into a recycling bin. She closed the door to the small locker, grimacing at the squeal of rusty old hinges, and headed for classroom 2-A with only a passing thought for the schoolmates who had suddenly decided to antagonize her. A mafioso occupied with preventing an intrafamily war, after all, had more important matters on the mind.

"'The summer rains came, the court was in retreat, and an even longer interval than usual had passed since his last visit to Sanjo. Though the minister and his family were much put out, they spared no effort to make him feel welcome. The minister's sons were more attentive than to the emperor himself. Genji was on particularly good terms with Tono Chujo. They enjoyed music together and more frivolous diversions as well.'"

Azalya couldn't focus on Mawabi's crisp voice reading from _The Tale of Genji_. It wasn't because the flowery purple prose of the story itself bored her—though, of course, the classical Japanese text couldn't hold a candle to Italian literature. No, anyone would find it hard to concentrate on even the most enthralling lecture with distractions attacking him or her like red ants.

_Sting!_

Azalya slapped the back of her neck, wincing at the sharp prick irritating her skin. Her fingers came away lightly stained with blood. She put it down to mosquitoes until what felt like two pebbles simultaneously hit the back of her head and bounced onto her desk. She glared at the missiles that had fallen onto her closed copy of _The Tale of Genji_, grabbed the back of her chair, and twisted around. She glowered at the students sitting in the back of the class, but none met her accusatory gaze.

The sound of heavy papers smacking against her desk pulled her gaze in the opposite direction, and Azalya turned to face an irascible teacher hovering over her like an executioner.

"Good morning, Mawabi-sensei," Azalya said to numerous snickers.

Mawabi quelled the background noise with one of her looks. "I suppose something back there is more interesting than the lesson?"

With a winning smile, the heedless student replied, "Than _The Tale of Genji_? Sensei, they can't be compared."

Mawabi tapped the spine of her copy of the text against her shoulder. "Cavallone," she dictated in a tone of uncharacteristic calm, "I think you must feel like cleaning the basement today."

"I think you must have misunderstood, Sensei. I'm very interested in Japanese literature class." _Interested in finding out when this class ends._

Mawabi gave a snort. "Then to demonstrate your love of Japanese literature, why don't you take this opportunity to practice kanji and read aloud for us? My voice is getting tired."

"Then wouldn't it be much better if we took a break instead?" Azalya suggested.

A carved smile formed on Mawabi's academic face. She pointed to the podium at the front of the classroom. "Read, Cavallone," she commanded.

Imagine, if you would, a common Japanese low-wage worker ordering a high-ranking mafioso around like a master to a slave.

After a brief staring contest, Azalya had to submit to the hierarchy of the school. She inclined her head and stood. Aware of the twenty-odd pair of eyes watching her with a mixture of pity and glee, Azalya reached for the book hiding under a blue folder and a Japanese dictionary. Before she could dig it out, the chair diagonally in front of her slid to the left. It smashed into her desk, knocking a mess of pencils, papers, and books onto the floor.

"Ahhh!" Seiko exclaimed, jumping out of her seat. "Oh, I'm _sorry_ Asa-chan! Let me help you pick it all up." Scurrying around on the ground, the short-haired girl gathered up Azalya's school supplies. She dumped most of them in a pile on the desk and held _The Tale of Genji_ out.

Azalya looked at her friend's earnest face. She looked at the pastel blue nail indicating the spot where Mawabi had left off reading. "Thanks, Seiko."

* * *

"Why," the distressed girl demanded with a motherly air, "why, _why_ can't you stay out of trouble for just one day?"

Azalya unwrapped the plastic covering her sandwich and grinned. "Would you ask a _hiroo_ to change its spots?"

"_Hyoo_ is the word you're looking for," Hana corrected. "Leopard. _Hiroo_ with an _r_ sound is 'fatigue'."

"Thanks. Well, it's a good thing I didn't make a mistake like that during the reading, right?"

"If you paid attention in class, you wouldn't have had to do it in the first place," Seiko rejoined, sounding righteously indignant.

Chewing on her rice thoughtfully, the serious Hana said, "You shouldn't have helped her. Then maybe she'd have learned her lesson."

"What's this? My own friends betraying me?"

"I'll help a leopard change its spots if I'm friends with it," Seiko declared. "You already quit smoking, didn't you?"

"Totally different. I won't die if I don't read _Genji_." Azalya waved her Panini in the air, and her careless motion made a tomato drop out of the flapping slices of bread and into her lap. "Aw, crap." **[3]**

"That's what you get."

"Whatever..." She flicked the miserable slice of fruit off of her skirt and scowled at the stain it left.

"Just go wash that off before you start smelling like a salad."

Sealing her Panini in the plastic wrap again, Azalya got to her feet and muttered, "It's not like we put dressing on sandwiches."

"Remember to bring a bento next time!" Seiko called after her as she left.

"Don't be silly." Hana scolded. "Could you imagine how much Aza'd spill on herself trying to use chopsticks? It's a hard art to master, you know."

"Then we'd have to send her to the laundry room."

"She should stick to pasta."

"So right."

"_Zitto!_" **[4]**

"Was that a curse?" Seiko wondered.

"How should I know? By the way, isn't she supposed to be making wedding plans with Yamamoto during lunch?"

Making a childish bad-smell face, Azalya stomped off towards the girls' bathroom. What was the point of having friends if all they did was bother you?

* * *

"Why's her skirt wet?"

"Do ya think she peed herself?"

"No way! What if those senpai really threw her into the pool?"

"No, they wouldn't do it during school."

Azalya sighed deeply. There _was_ a wet stain darkening the front of her skirt, but it was the smaller than her palm and near the hem. Junior high school girls, it seemed, had few skills of deduction. And what was this about throwing her in the pool? There was something criminal about surrounding a mafioso with vacuous teenage girls and self-important teachers. Forcing the aforementioned professional to assume the life of insipid school girl was tantamount to sin.

No, Azalya did not want to go to class. There was simply no way around that rock-solid fact. Though she walked as straight-backed and purposefully as always, a growing sense of antipathy made lifting her shoes free of the floor a struggle.

The cheap vinyl floor won the fight outside her classroom. She might have hovered near the threshold for who knew how long if the rest of her classmates hadn't been trying to enter the room before math.

"Hey, what's the hold up?" an irked girl exclaimed. "We're all gonna be late!"

Azalya wheeled around.

The speaker was the blue-haired "football star," Hitomi, who'd so skillfully aimed the ball into the trashcan two days ago. She stood with arms akimbo a little ahead of the circle of five girls. Azalya recognized Yuri and the pink-haired Sakura from their class and a stout girl from Ryohei's class 3-C, but not the other two.

"We're early," Azalya countered levelly. "But they might be late if they stay here too long."

Hitomi marched forward amid the avid, worshiping stares of those behind her, planted her hand on Azalya's shoulder, and delivered a firm shove. A look of comical shock took over her previously hardened face when Azalya didn't budge. The shock turned quickly into pain as Azalya's fingers closed around her wrist and squeezed tightly.

"Damn Yankee!" Hitomi squealed, trying and failing to pull away.

"I'm not a delinquent like those breadheads," Azalya corrected severely, increasing the pressure on Hitomi's arm. "But I'll fight you if that's what you're after."

Looking scared, Yuri hurriedly intervened, "Let go of her, Cavallone. She didn't mean anything by it."

Azalya glanced at the apprehensive faces of the gathered girls and hid a momentary flash of guilt. She was above such pettiness. The teenage girls of Namimori Junior High were anything but worthy opponents. This was no different from when she'd lost her temper with Daisuke after P.E. the day before.

Hitmoi stumbled when Azalya threw her arm aside. Her expression was the twisted anger and fear of someone who has misjudged their prey, and she retreated into the depths of her herd, glaring.

The other girls looked more subdued now, too. They turned in amongst themselves, whispering furtively about what to do. Only Yuri stood apart, gazing at Azalya with a tormented expression on her face. Her mouth opened, and Azalya heard her draw a deep breath.

"Yo, what's the hold up?"

Swaggering up from the cafeteria, Tanaka and two of the footballers from their class were forced to stop their manly procession as they came upon the roadblock of girls. Tanaka looked expectantly at Azalya with an expression that was confused and almost a little worried.

Azalya directed an enigmatic half-smile to the group of girls, though they now seemed more like deer in headlights. Yuri, especially, caught open-mouthed and wide-eyed, obviously couldn't decide how to react to the interruption.

"Does anyone really want to be in class so early?" Azalya posed.

"Guess not. But better wait sittin' than standin' 'round, eh?" He made a movement as if to walk around them but remembered his manners at the last minute. "Ladies first," he said to the five huddled girls. "Uh, hang on a sec, aren't you guys third-years?"

The third-years mumbled excuses withdrew quickly, arm in arm. They didn't hesitate to throw Azalya a glare of deep loathing before going.

Azalya jerked her head in the direction of the door, indicating that Yuri, Hitomi,and Sakura should enter. They did so none too happily, and Tanaka's friends followed them.

"You finally accepted you're not a real girl, huh?" Tanaka joked. She had to assume he meant to be funny, however, because his tone and expression appeared serious.

"You know, I'm not sure which one of us should hold the door open for the other."

"Wait out here a sec," Tanaka advised. "Yamamoto should be coming up soon."

"So?" Azalya shrugged, taking pride in her nonchalance.

"So," Tanaka said, rolling his eyes, "a friend wants ta talk. He was lookin' to catch you before break, but some random girls kept hovering around, asking 'bout baseball."

"Well, that does sound inconvenient," she said doubtfully.

He sighed deeply. "Look, I'm going inside. Be careful, 'kay?"

"Worrying about me? I'm flattered."

Tanaka sighed more deeply than before. "Seriously. What just happened could've been bad, so watch out. You're not nearly scary enough to be a real girl. See, there's Yamamoto now." Waving at his friend, Tanaka sauntered into the room.

Azalya had a moment to wonder how Tanaka, who always had his head in the baseball cloud next to Yamamoto's, had perceived the girls' threat, before her attention shifted to the approaching trio. "Hey, boys."

"Hey," Yamamoto greeted happily.

"H-hi," Tsuna mumbled.

"Hrn," Gokudera grunted.

"Perfect timing, we were just looking for ya to talk 'bout the plan for tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's Saturday already?" Azalya realized with a groan. "I haven't accomplished anything all week."

"So it's a perfect weekend to relax," Yamamoto grinned. "Like I was sayin', we decided to meet in the park. Dad's agreed to make sushi for a picnic. You'll see the usual Tanabata things, like writing wishes. We'll probably go to the main street from there."

"Sure..." Azalya said slowly, still absorbing his rapid-fire list of activities. "What time are we meeting?"

"Hmm?" Yamamoto glanced at Tsuna and Gokudera for an idea, but both shrugged. "Noon, maybe? You don't have plans, right?"

"No, I... Well, we can all go from Tsuna's house as usual—"

"Eh!" Tsuna blurted. "No need, really. You don't need to, Azalya-san. You saw all the loud brats at my house. They'll just get worse with more people."

"As his right-hand man, _I'll_ be with the Tenth," Gokudera bragged smugly, as though his were an enviable position.

His declaration did not inspire confidence. "Hmm," she contemplated.

"Reborn is coming, too," Tsuna added quickly.

"_I _will be with the Tenth," Gokudera reiterated.

Azalya resisted the urge to make a snide comment. "All right," she agreed instead. "I'll meet you there."

"I'll come by 'round noon, then," Yamamoto said as though repeating plans they'd already made. "We'd better go in before class starts. See ya at practice."

"Wait, um..." Her mind went blank.

He waited a moment longer, grinning, to make sure she really had nothing left to say, and then gave her a little push towards the door.

Azalya took her seat with an odd mix of confusion and elation swirling inside her. She barely noticed the hostility cast her way.

The earlier tension diffused as the estrogen and testosterone flooding the hallways reached equilibrium as the remaining students filtered into the classroom. They sat in their assigned seats, pulled out their materials, and waited for lecture to begin (and end). Azalya gazed out the window at the empty school courtyard. For once, her mind hummed with thoughts not of the mafia.

* * *

**Footnotes! **

**[1] **You might remember Azalya's previous annoyance with Nintendo. I've never watched _Jersey Shore_, myself, but I've heard plenty about it... If I were Italian, I'd much rather be compared to Mario than Snooky. Red jumpsuit beat orange tan!

**[2] **A (poor?) translation of _The Tale of Genji_ found from google. It's obviously not contemp lit... The quote is an arbitrary-ish one. If I were serious, I'd comb the text for a fitting quote, but that'd take way too long... Ah, laziness...

**[3]** I'm sorry I'm making her eat a Panini... I thought it might be less stereotypical than pasta, though pasta sauce would be so much more fun to spill on her.

**[4] **Shut up/Be quiet (translation courtesy of , my best friend as a Spanish student –heart-)

You know, I was tempted to litter the whole chapter with footnotes explaining everything I thought while I was writing, but thankfully, I abstained. Never let me do that. I rant enough as it is, non?

**Q&A **(I've been practicing my ampersands. Legit,.)

Is Dino's Dream (yes, you deserve a capital) canon? 

Not yet! Amano-sensei loves to steal my work, though, you know. I can't believe he (she?) pilfered the mafia and my dream guy from my plotbunny-ridden mind.  
And I hope it sounds like something he'd do 'cause I wanna keep him in character, don't I? Maybe someday I'll try writing crackfic for fun. So hard x.x

Where do you get your inspiration?

Ah, what a question... Most of the time, my stories come from _what ifs_. I can pinpoint the exact moment I dreamt up the Cavallone Crisis (what's with me today?). You might remember a concise colloquy between Romario and Dino back when the mafia was a fun plot point for Reborn to play with and the Cavallone Family was called in as extras. It went something like this.  
Romario: They definitely think we have nothing better to do.  
Dino: I want them to think that._  
The logical question: But why?  
Ob-chan's (farfetched) conclusion: THEY'RE HIDING SOMETHING! _

Uh... yeah... Sorry, I just gave you a biography of _Sotto Voce_... Lemme know if you guys have any more questions! As you can see, I'm more than happy to answer. I'm dying for some conversation, here :)

But... no rant-time today, 'cause I think I've far exceeded the self-imposed quota of how much I'm allowed to talk. Thanks for reading! Love y'all to pieces! (What am I saying?)


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